The Last Trumpet Sounds

Rain fell, and the wild winds howled as if in protest of its drowning of the land as the webs of lightning ravaged the sky, the rumbling of thunder the sound of their satiation. The survivors muttered frantic prayers to any deities that might deign to hear them as they rescued what they could of their possesions, and headed for the higher lands, wading through corpse ridden waters to the roads, each and every one with the certain belief in their hearts that this was the end of the world, and the time of reckoning was nigh. Their gods no longer cared.

Only the angels watched over them now. And there was steel in their eyes and in their hearts and in their hands as they flew over the land, doing the bidding of their lord, the one called god.

The slender angel with pale and clouded eyes sheathed his sword in the body of a man for the fortieth time that day, and watched disinterested as it crumpled to the floor. Drenched to the skin with blood and dirt and rain, he stretched and shook his wings, with an expression of intangible contempt for the corpses strewn around them.
\"So ends our most glorious and righteous quest, Morael.\"
His dark eyed companion lowered his blades with a sigh.
\"It matters not, my friend Sahaqiel. We have but one task now.\"
\"One task, aye. One last foul task.\" Sahaqiel closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. \"We will rid this world of humanity and then we will be done with it.\"

Tia choked on water as she surfaced, trying in vain to remain afloat and at the same time attract the attention of any potential rescuer. She gasped for air as she looked around for anything that would keep her alive just a little bit longer. She felt cold in her stomach as she remembered the screams of her family as they were swept away from her, and she knew that however much she hoped, however much she believed, she would never see them again. If this was the end of the world, then so be it, but at least she had lived to witness it. She looked up at the sky, still clouds rolled, and nearby, a dark shape loomed. A boat! Tia\'s heart leapt, and she yelled as loud as she could, hoping to be heard above the fury of the storm. It seemed that her luck had not deserted her. The ship came closer and a rope was tossed over the side. She was hoisted aboard and collapsed, exhausted on the deck.

\"I thought I told you no more children.\" the ship\'s captain half snarled at the tall seamstress, who stood her ground. \"We can\'t afford this number of dependents as it is; our rations won\'t last out.\"
\"We are taking everybody that we can to the Highlands, Rann.\" she insisted quietly.
\"Damn it, woman. I grow bored of your insolence. If we run out of clean water, then no-one will get to the Highlands.\"
\"My name is Dana.\" she said. The line of her jaw was in perfect concurrence with the shape of her neck and of the delicate bones in her shoulders, accentuated by the unusual cut of her dress. Rann admired her for her poise and level head, but did not sympathise with her views.
\"I don\'t care what your name is. What I care about is how many people, how much water, how many lives.\"
\"We can\'t just leave people to die.\" argued Dana.
\"Yes. We can. I am captain of this ship and I will be obeyed. No more stowaways, no more children.\" he pressed his face close to Dana\'s and she made it clear that she did not fear him. \"Understand?\"
She stepped away. \"Those already aboard will stay aboard?\"
He nodded. \"You have my word on that, Dana.\"
\"Then I agree to your terms.\" she regarded him hungrily. \"On one condition.\"
\"What might that be?\"
She laughed. \"That you kiss me, of course.\"
Rann raised an eyebrow. A respectable merchant such as himself was not often invited to such things so openly. However, it was the end of the world.
He kissed her hand. She laughed at him. \"Come now, you know that\'s not what I meant.\"
Rann scowled. \"A kiss is a kiss.\"
\"Then try again.\" ordered Dana. \"With feeling this time.\" She took both of his hands and arranged them about herself. He flushed, and wondered at herroprropriety. Her husband was one of the passengers on his ship. The end of the world, he reminded himself, and he held her against him, kissed her gently and removed her hands from his waist. She smelt his neck, aroused.
\"Long time since I was with a man taller than me.\" she commented. Rann shook his head, amused.
\"You had better go care for your latest guest, Dana.\"
She left with a flick of her braided hair and a posture of her well turned ankles, vowing that he would not refuse her offer next time.

The girl called Tia stirred in her dreams, feeling warm and safe for the first time in many days. Dana saw that the form of her body showed her to be on the cusp of womanhood, and smiled fondly. She had always wanted a daughter, but the gods had thus far refused her that gift.
\"Are you thinking, my sweet?\" Her husband\'s footsteps on the floor of their cabin were like that of a deer, inaudible to all but the most skilled of hunters. Dana pushed dark brown curls from the sleeping Tia\'s face.
\"Yes, Jerome. I was thinking.\" she acknowledged, and turned to him, and his eyes shone with nothing but the sincerest adoration. He was as hopelessly besotted with her as he had been the day that they met, and willing to look past all her flaws in order to receive just a fraction of that emotion from her in return. He made her smile. He always made her smile. Today she laughed. \"I was thinking that I want a daughter.\"
Jerome\'s eyes widened helplessly. What a girl could do with eyes like those. Abruptly, she kissed him, her lips on his like the jaws of a snake, pushing him up against the wall, and slipping cold hands under the fabric of his shirt. He gasped.
\"You want a daughter now?\" he whispered.
\"Yes.\" answered Dana. \"I want a daughter now.\"
With a skill and dexterity that she had not seen in any other man, he unlaced her corset, letting it fall open as he planted butterfly kisses on her neck and shoulders, causing goosebumps in places that he had not even touched. Yet. Tensely, she removed his shirt, then took a step backwards. He glanced at Tia, fast asleep, but he was never comfortable without a bed. Dana looked at him, questioning, but he shook his head, and pushed her down to the floor, playing with the lacing of her undergarments around her stomach, and her pulse quickened. She put her head against his chest, hearing his heart beat through the muscle under his skin, and he held her close, fingers drawing quick circles around her breasts. He loved her. She knew he loved her. She wondered if she really loved him, but was caught up in the pleasure of physical sensation. It did not matter. He loved her. She felt his warm hand caress her upper inner thigh, and she saw him, veinous and erect. He made her smile. He always made her smile. He kissed her, pinning her down. Nobody seemed to have any clothes now, and her dark nipples stood erect in the cold. His body was warm. She moaned. He kissed her again, and she ran her fingers through his hair, wanting him. There was no love. Only want. Want reigned supreme, but still he kept her waiting. Wanting.

The dark haired girl lay on the bed in a state of half-awareness, hardly daring to breath, the motion of the boat making her nauseous as memory became superimposed on reality. She did not know what was true. Her mother and her mother\'s lover were on the bed, always on the bed, never her father, a new lover every night, and Tia lay on the floor, in the shadows, scared and clutching at her tiny, silver necklace as she tried to sleep. Always a new lover, every night she would watch her mother spread her legs for another man as she clutched her tiny silver necklace to her heart, afraid of the darkness, and prayed in vain for her mother\'s soul.

Dana smelt him, his breath becoming laboured, and sensed her own readiness. She arched against him, an invitation, and he did not refuse. She felt his first penetration, a release, and held herself to him, burying her face in his neck. A burning sensation, and a long familiar ecstacy. Still want ruled supreme. He penetrated, and she moaned his name. Again, again, she felt him possesed by her. He would always love her. She would always want more. They cried out. He came. She came.

They were all the same.