Outside of Eden - 1. Prologue

Outside of Eden - Prologue

When I was young, I'd ask my mother which plants were likely to grow thorns as seasons pass. She'd answer me, voice strong with confident, accusing pride, that 'the roads of charcoal and ash, and the timbermen that burned along them so well, were long behind us. The days of sacrifice, honour, and lustful hope were forever gone.
The path ahead was life as was meant to be lived: we would not die from lack. Forward streams ran clear, shining with promise of eternal splendour. Our skies would be so clean that, through content, we'd swallow them entire with the enormity of our breaths. Food would be so plentiful, ripe berries saturated with sugar and game dripping with fat, that, indeed, our only problems would be in moderation - such that we did not explode from consumption; grow dull with pleasure.'
When I grew curious, afraid, filled with the discontent of life's triviality, I'd seek out uncle Jack. He was the man of stories. He was the man of secrets. I once asked him for a real story, something he had seen himself. Grim smile stretched thin across his pale lips, he agreed. His voice was filled with pity, love and respect, his words merciless with unfiltered accuracy.
He told me of life before Eden, a time when the fruit of knowledge grew fat off the blood of man. He told me of a people so desperately struggling for their values that corrupted passion for the conflict consumed them, and then everything else around them.
'First to go was order, the weave of construct being the rope that constrained our progress; the thread that bound our sanity. Next to go was society, beacons of culture; science, art, religion, were burned up in the height of man's fever. Human nature had finally consumed human progress. Last to fall was law - brutal, powerful and persuasive, it was to endure long enough to petrify, become a perverse counterpoint of what it once was.
On the final day, fire filled the sky - dazzling colours of orange, gold and blue, and painful, beautiful silence. The fires stretched down and out, reaching the ground and drinking deep of humanity; inhumanity. The people seemed to burn forever - screams could be heard everywhere within the city walls. We were found guilty of defying our own versions of morality, and sentenced to die.'