(no subject)

[acts_of_gord]

To say the sun is hot today would be like saying the river was wet; the solar rays are pounding down through ninety-three million miles of space and sixty-two miles of atmosphere to laugh in tolerant amusement at the presumption that a thin cotton shirt could keep them from burning into his back. It's damned hot, sweltering, bone-melting heat. You get that in New Mexico, or at least that's what he's been told. He's only seen the first few months of the year here. If this is what the summers are like, it's a mercy he works underground-

wait.

Not underground. Underground was-

Underground was before. Underground was in the quiet time when things made sense and the desert was the place you went between the end of work and the start of meals, where you went to sort your head out before lying down to sleep. This isn't-

This isn't like that. This is something else. This is still the desert, but it's still something else-

The towers of stone rise in the distance, massive bluffs and cliffs and mesas carved in the landscape by water long gone and wind that echoes down to the present day. They're supposed to be closer, he remembers walking out to them, they're supposed to be closer-

He takes a step forward and the ground under his foot goes tink. When he looks down, it's... glass. Green, mottled glass. Lumpy and bubbly like the site of a lightning strike, but a fulgurite would be in one place and this stuff stretches out, it reaches out as far as the eye can see, it's covering how much of the landscape-

tck

The sun isn't burning through his shirt onto his back any more. The sun can't burn through his suit. But the suit's no comfort because-

tck

-other things can make their presence felt when he's got the suit on, things he wouldn't even notice otherwise, things that-

tck tck tck tck

He's looking out over a field of ... not just green glass. Fused sand. Sand melted into glass like (if the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky) all the heat and light and BANG in the world (that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One) had been unleashed at once-

tckatckatckatcka

The twisted, scorched, half-melted remnants of a metal sign are sticking out of the glass. The words are unreadable. The logo isn't.

The shadow of a human being burned into the rock wall close at hand isn't, either.


tckatckatckatcka

(I am become the shatterer of worlds)