The Watchers

[dragonqueen]

They sit, still as stones, spotting the desert landscape. That is all they do, just sitting, and watching, and waiting. Finally one moves, raises its head and asks, “Is it time? Will it happen?”

 

Another stirs itself enough to shake its scaly head. Then they lapse back into silence and wait yet more. They have been waiting and watching for eons, since the beginning of time. They watched the birth of the world, and they will watch its death.

 

They watch the world from the sidelines, unemotinal and uncaring. What is their purpose? Who knows? Do they work for some higher being?

 

Time passes; empires rise and fall. Still they watch, never taking a hand in anything, just observing. Will they ever tire of watching? Hundreds, no, thousands of them participate, watching from the sidelines, shaking their heads and sighing at human foolishness. “How short, how meaningless are their lives,” marvels one.

 

“Hush; you must not mock them. ‘Tis not their fault. That is the way they were made,” a lizard of a deep green hide answers. Their leader glares them both into silence. Their place is not to judge, but merely to watch, and wait. But what do they wait for?

 

After many eons they have a visitor, or rather, visitors. Four horseman; one all in skeletal black, another starved and emaciated, the third marked with hideous sores and pock marks, and the last clothed in blood red. The watchers mutter among themselves, and bow their heads to these strangers. The four acknowledge them, and one speaks to their leader.

 

“How goes it, Green One?” queries the skeletal visitor courteously.

 

“Well, my lord, very well.” the Green One replies. “We sense it coming.”

 

“Very good. Carry on.” With that, the four horsemen leave, galloping off into the horizon.

 

It is many millenniums before the watchers become restless, but finally they do. The creatures stir and begin to murmur excitedly. They sense the end of their task approaching, and are eager.

 

Suddenly, a flash, a boom! A high-pitched keening fills the air, as if the earth herself were wailing. But then, silence, as the blanket of destruction covers the world. The creatures watch benevolently, feeling fulfillment. This is what they have been waiting for, all this time-- the Apocalypse, the death of the world, Judgment Day. The green ones are content, for it has happened.

One world is destroyed; another is created in its place. The other world is not mourned, but forgotten, for what do the lives of such mortal creatures matter? For every one that died there are a thousand more.

 

The emerald colored beasts move, for the first time in ages, and depart, traveling to a new world, to start again their task. One lingers, thinking. He is slow to rouse himself, and says, almost to himself, “There they go, and I must follow, for I am their leader. What new world’s doom will we next announce?”