Flash Fiction: January 28, 2025
The writing prompt: Write about a guardian who maintains the balance between light and dark.
She weaved the inky threads between her fingers, carefully pulling each one to observe its strength. This time, the Dark had come back quicker than when she last banished it to the Ends of the Earth. Her concern was minimal, knowing that she would never lack the ability to send it back to where it belonged. Nonetheless, it persisted.
The last banishment was carried out silently, like all of the others before it, but it wasn’t without complication. Unsuspectingly, the human race fell into a deep slumber after she rained down her sleep powder like soft winter snow. While they tumbled into dreams about their children, morning drives, birthdays, and lovers, she went to work to make sure they would never know nightmares.
With her feet planted firmly on the earth, she closed her eyes and let each strand of her black hair begin to grow. Only seconds passed before they were miles in length, but they did not stop there. As soon as she felt the heat rise into her body from the soil below her, she opened her eyes.
It was then that her locks stopped growing. A gust of wind met her face before catching her hair, eventually forming a vortex that thrust each strand into the sky. Rather than tangling in the ethereal tornado, the locks began to set off in different directions. Standing still, she let each strand hunt the Dark in all corners of the world.
They slithered into office buildings, dispensing Light in empty hallways that had already gone dark. Strands carrying Light forced their way into houses across suburbia, where the Dark had erased what their inhabitants’ once called home. They even illuminated the forests, where the wildlife had begun to go blind in the Dark – but just as she thought she had illuminated the entire planet, she heard a crack. Then another.
Suddenly, the snapping was the only sound she could hear. It was then that she realized the ends of her hair were breaking off one by one. The heat she had felt rising from below was now burning her skin. Out of her peripheral vision, she could see shadows rising from cracks in the earth, so she did the only thing she knew would stop it.
She screamed.
Her locks froze in place. From the center of her small body emanated a ball of Light so bright that the shadows immediately disintegrated. Every inch of Earth was now draped in the golden Light coming from within her. After just a few seconds, she collapsed, and the blinding Light inside of her dimmed. Earth as the human race knew it was now shining in all of its brilliance, and when everyone awoke from their dreams, she made sure it seemed no different.
Now gazing at the threads of Dark in her hands, she paused to listen to the sounds of the bustling world around her.
Someone arguing about a parking spot; a woman shaming a child for not washing his hands. In the distance, a couple inaudibly screaming, followed by a slap. A man begging for bread.
Unexpectedly, the Dark began to melt and slip between her fingers. As it dripped onto the ground, it started to stream in one direction. She watched it puddle before then growing into the size of a pond, and then a vast lake.
Ridding her hands of what remained, she decided it was time she rest.