[centre][h3]Tales from the Apocalypse - Finding Green[/h3][/centre]
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The unending red and gray wastes proved time and time again that to have hope was to be mad - Isa the Elder had seen it all-too-often. He prided himself on leading the greatest group of survivors in the region - not that he had met many competitors, but hey! - and whenever one or three of the youths said to him, “You know what? I’ve had it with you! We’re staking out on our own!”, he would give it two or three weeks and his flock would eventually pass by one or three ash-clad corpses. It was never an easy sight, and Isa prayed his days would be numbered from the moment he should ever think it so; however, it would always be an expected sight. What eventually did them in would be a mystery, of course: Vagabonds who had both joined his flock and passed by spoke of all kinds of dangers that could be the bane of anyone, be it young or old, man or woman, strong or sick. For his own sake, Isa the Elder would do his best just to put one foot in front of the other and make sure the rest of his flock could do the same.

Still, feeding a cohort of twenty-two was no simple feat - Isa had many times been forced to send away those who slowed them down or made too much trouble. Many in his flock despised him for it - he heard them chatter behind his back - but none dared rebel for fear of having to inherit his job. No, Isa knew there was security in his position, as there always is in jobs born out of necessity rather than want. 

Isa the Elder wasn’t alone in his flock, of course; he had started with his clan, some of whom were still alive, and expanded from there. His first wife Asha had fallen ill with a cruel pox some months back, and it was with heavy heart that Isa had slit her throat to relieve her of the pain of dying alone in the ashlands. His second wife, Maiie, was thankfully in good health (or as good as could be, anyway), though she had yet to bear him a child even after nearly half a year. Rumours had begun to spread throughout the flock that Isa had lost his vigour or that Maiie had gone as barren as the land; whomsoever dared accuse the offended parties of this directly, however, quickly faced the wrath of the Elder himself. 

Isa the Elder received his title of seniority for a reason: he had a son, see - Isa the Younger. Equal parts a beam of support and a thorn in his side, the two had a tenuous relationship that had frequently sparked into loud and raging arguments by the evening fire. Every bit an idealist, the Younger would always curse the Elder’s use of harsh, stern punishment to control the flock; the Elder would talk down to the Younger, citing his years of experience and record of survival as proof of his mandate. Many times had the Younger threatened to leave; equally many times had the Elder threatened to banish him. Neither threat held water, however; both knew the other to be too important to them. For indeed, even in the Time to End Time, what lasted was neither ideals or stability, but the flock, and the flock needed a ram. Isa the Elder grew frailer by the day (though he refused to show it), and everyone agreed Isa the Younger, as the kid whose horns were beginning to grow, would be the next in line. Even after all of society had broken down, the fundamental rule remained: Kin shall follow the path of kin. With his expecting wife Dya by his side, it seemed that kin would follow the path of kin for some time more, as well.

Then one night, Isa the Elder had a dream: He was walking through a valley of green, full of shapes twisting, folding and unfolding themselves and enveloped in an impervious fog that seemed to blur out all detail in the landscape. The ground, a mat of green straws, sported a metallic line that blinked with a cyan light. The line guided him forward, taking him to a tree - a black tree, though not like any tree he had ever seen nor heard of. It appeared metallic, and its branches had grown in no organic pattern, but a highly systemised one. Its natural beauty was nonexistent, for nothing living could resemble its rigidness. As he approached it, he found an old crone sitting among the roots, fused into the tree itself. In his dream, he said nothing, and he didn’t need to, for the crone spoke to him a prophecy:

[indent][i]A son of nightmares shall be born;
Display for it no sign of scorn;
Treat it as your flesh and blood,
And you will reach the Verdant Flood.
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Then the scene disappeared, becoming a new vision - one of endless rolling hills of grass and trees, of plentiful rain and shrubberies bearing fruit and berries. Birdsong filled his ears and moist air pervaded his nostrils. A warm wind swept him off his feet and carried him forward, his journey taking him further and further towards the gentle sun.

As swiftly as the dream had begun, it ended, and a flickering light stirred Isa to wakefulness. It was a torch, held by his long-time travelling companion Yosof, father of Dya. The chieftain rubbed the night out of his eyes and said, “Yosof, what ails you at this hour? The moon is still aloft.”

“Forgive my disturbance, brother,” replied the old man, “but it is my daughter - she is giving birth to your grandson!”

Isa blinked and mustered out of the bedroll and hurried on after Yosof out of his family’s humble tent. He caught the sight of the Younger’s empty roll, as well - to think his own son wouldn’t wake him up at a time like this. The camp was small, so the run was short; Isa was baffled that the screams hadn’t woken him earlier. The whole host had gathered around the entrance of Yosof’s family tent, and both Isa and Yosof pushed the others aside to peer inside. Just as they did, the loud cries of a baby could be heard. 

“Congratulations, Isa, you have--” The midwife suddenly screamed as she saw what was in her hands; gasps and squeals from all around followed. “By the gods!”

“Wh-wha? What is it?” mumbled Dya weakly. Isa the Younger glared in disbelief at the child, no, the [i]thing[/i] that his wife had born him. Its skin was scaly all over the torso and arms; its legs were capricornian and hooved; it had claws for hands; its head was feline in shape and covered with thin, wet fur. Its scream was human, but nothing else about it was. Isa the Younger pointed a quivering finger at it.

“Y-you sick whore! What wicked demon have you laid with to give me such an abomination for a son?!”

“Wh-what? What are you--?” Shiveringly, Dya had managed to angle herself so she could view the child. Upon doing so, she, too, screamed and tried to cover her mouth, but her body was frozen. The only one in the group not panicking was Isa the Elder - his eyes had glazed over with an empty recognition of the prophecy in the dream; he wished it had not come to his family and his clan, but if something as unthinkable as this had happened, how then could the rest of the prophecy be untrue?

A sound of rushing steel brought him back to reality and he watched his son crawl swiftly over to the sobbing baby with a knife in his hand. Isa the Elder picked up the child and took it in his arms to everyone’s shock. 

“What are you doing, father?!” 

“We cannot kill it,” he insisted. “We must let it live!”

“Are you out of your mind?” blasted his son. Yosof knelt beside Dya and cried.

“How - oh gods, how could this happen? My own daughter! What shame; what disgrace!” Dya, too, could not quell her ceaseless tears.

“I had a dream - I dreamt this would happen!” declared the Elder and bore the child out of the tent to get some safe distance from everyone else. Luckily for him and the baby, everyone else made it their mission to stay as far away from them as possible - everyone except Isa the Younger, knife still very much in hand. Isa the Elder shifted his grip on the child and held it gently on one arm, the other extending peacefully towards his son. “Son, listen to me…”

“That thing, father, that [i]demon[/i] is evil! It infested my wife, ate my son and took its place! It has no purpose in this world!” The Younger jabbed at the baby, the Elder dodging barely. 

“If we kill it, we will never get out of this ashen desert! I have seen it, son - Paradise!”

For a moment, the words reached him, and Isa lowered his knife. “... What do you mean?”

Testing his chances, the Elder stepped forward, hand steering slowly towards the knife. “In my dream, there was an old crone… She told me that we needed to care for this child, despite its nightmarish form, and we would eventually find the way to the Verdant Flow…”

“The Verdant Flow?” asked one of the others. The Elder nodded.

“Yes. In my dream, I saw a land of green, of rain and fruit. It truly was nothing short of Paradise, everyone. If, if we do our duty as this spirit has commanded, then our suffering in this ashen desert will be over! We will be safe!”

A silence followed, albeit one with the occasional interchange of mumblings. The Younger lowered his knife slightly as he looked his father in the eyes; the Elder formed a small smile and reached out to take the blade from him. However, the Younger cast one more glance at the horribly deformed child in his father’s arms and tightened the grip about the knife. In a lightning movement, he hefted the blade to the sky and leapt forward. “I will not be at peace with that [i]monster[/i] alive!”

“NO!”

It happened in a flash. An instinct trained over years and years of repetition had brought the Elder to draw his own dagger, sheathed as it had been on his hip. On the ground laid his son, the Younger, his belly sliced open and close to bleeding dry. The Elder’s hand was caked in crimson, and the screams of the onlookers were hardly able to shake him from his daze. As the Younger’s friends crowded around his corpse, Yosof approached the Elder with shock on his face.

“... You would slay your own son to protect that, that [i]thing[/i].” Isa couldn’t even muster the words to repond. Yosof pointed away. “You will not take anything from us anymore. We’ve had it with your cruel and wicked ways. Now begone!”

Isa wasn’t even allowed to touch his son’s corpse. As more and more turned their denial into rage, Isa could no longer remain. So he ran. He ran and ran and ran, ran until the campfires could no longer be seen even at night. At that point, he stopped, collapsing to his knees in a bind between emotional and physical exhaustion. He looked to the sky and prayed, wept for mercy. He received no answer, save for a weak gurgle in his arms. The little monster turned his gall to curdles, but with the last of his true family gone, his grandson was all he had left. Reluctantly, he embraced the child, as all children should be. When he next rose, he noticed the ash had spawned straws of grass. He looked up ahead and saw the straws congregate into mats. As he ran up closer, he witnessed it: Endless swathes of green, damp with the evening rain and smelling of pollen. He shuffled over to a nearby shrubbery and inspected its branches - they were fat and plump with fruit and sweets. He picked one and savoured flavours he had never tasted before. He then regarded his grandson again, who looked at him curiously. He sighed and nodded.

“Just you and me, then, son… Just you and me.”

[hider=Summary!]
Story follows a small pack of humans surviving the apocalypse. Nothing big-plot relevant happens, but it’s a story about a dad who has a prophetic dream, kills his son on accident and goes on to find solace in some god-made green lands.
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