When the World Ends.

He had always liked gloomy weather. The slow, soft feel it gave him. The nature of an overcast day, and the sweet melancholy it caused to move through him. The subtly self reflecting thoughts that would surround and cocoon him, while he strove to create something new and beautiful with his mind. As he worked on his creation, he whistled a slow tune. He recalled the times spent with her, when he'd banter - the slow exposure of intelligence, a kind of mating dance that moved through little words and silent smiles the other could not see, across a distance.

He loved working with his hands. The exertion generally gave him cause to know that something had been made, some part of him had been put into that which he had created. The way a person felt about something that was created from a scratch would never be completely understood or appreciated by anyone but a creator such as he was. The beauty he saw in the patterns, in the colour, in the swirls of his paint across his canvas showed him the grace and beauty of nature's creation that could only be truly appreciated by art - turned inside out, so the very essence of the world and its contents could be appreciated within.

A true artist can often be told by something as small as his ability to get his hands dirty. Newcomers will always hesitate to have paint on their fingers. They would be scared of the feeling, the sticky feeling of their medium on their hands. The amount you have on you can tell an observer how comfortable you are doing what you're doing. Artists will have gifted fingers, and more often than not they shall be covered in the mark of their art - clay, paint, stone dust ...

He smiled as he noted his own hands covered to his wrist in colour. While this might bother others, he was happy to feel his sticky hands. He was certain that this was the purpose, the understanding, the bonding of an artist with his medium. The complete rapture of not shaping, but knowing the shape the object wants to take. Of being a facilitator in bringing the vision that is communicated to your mind. It was nearly spiritual, as he was certain that there was an idea out there, just looking for a place to emerge into the world of the real. He loved being the vehicle for the idea.

He was certain that he was appreciated and understood, and that his works were the way things should be. He didn't think of this as hubris or excessive pride; while there was little he knew about political science, he found it amusing that he agreed with both Karl Marx and Ayn Rand when they spoke of pride in the creation of something. Of course, as in all things, creative minds can make new conclusions from the same starting point. He started as all artists did - with an empty space in which to put his creation. He looked at the roof of his small home, and saw how it was filled with his art, and it always pleased him. In this secluded part of the city, he could spend his time here blissfully imbibing the feel of the weather, and not be worried about sounds or any human presence.

He felt unique in what he did. He cherished the happiness he was certain he brought to everyone, since he was certain that since everyone lived miserable lives, art was the vehicle of relief for them. He sought to make a triumphant vision of the perfection of the human form, of freedom from all that in life that binds, that limits. He tapped into the ultimate freedom that has been given - the potential that is hardwired into each of us at birth. He tried to show how perfection was found in the way nature formed and nurtured the human body.

The processes that deluded millions into belief in God, when it was merely natural selection. God was in the little details - in the microbes, in the harsh world that shaped the way we would be born, and how we would die, and how we would live. He paid obeisance to the forces that moved our life. He liked to think of himself as a force, as was everyone with the control of anything. He just wished, sometimes, that he could completely control his reactions. But then, wasn't there humanity in the absence of control? In the lack of perfection? How could perfection be defined, unless it was in the absence of something?

Evolution, like everything, sows the seed for its own survival. Time carries on, as a concept we like to measure by ephemeral temporal phenomenon. And the human body is like a singular bright spark, before it vanishes into nothing. He hoped to bring that to life, by trying to put into pictures his thoughts on the frailty of the human body. For if nothing was done to deal with that which the human body could not cope with, another creature would soon superscede human will and thought. The dependence upon implements created through human ingenuity not attuned to making humankind more comforted as opposed to disposed towards survival, as well as the propensity to create destruction in unimaginable scales.

As he thought this, he saw the smoke trails in the sky, and he knew the end had come.
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Food.
Hunger.
Movement - trace sensations. Vibrations in the air - movement. Hide. HIDE.
Food. Move swiftly.
Reached food. Consume. Who knows when it would come next?
Run away. Extreme heat. Discomfort. Hot air moving away at swift speeds. Scuttle away.
Safety.
Darkness.

And so the meek, shall inherit the Earth. The small creatures we dismiss as irrelevant. The ones we do everything to get rid of, but make it their sole purpose to live. Civilized, or otherwise.

For evolution doesn't care much about intelligence. It cares about survival.