I just wrote a beautiful angsty-turning-happy piece in here, and accidentally closed my browser window. I'm too frustrated to try again, so I'm throwing in something I wrote a while ago.

The drums reverberated in the distance, sounding their cold, heartless march, carrying an overtone of death and despair. Jason looked around the ramshackle walls surrounding the village he called home and closed his eyes in hopelessness. He and his neighbors had never considered the threat of invasion. They had always lived peacefully, working and plying their trades. The town was a ways off any main routes, and as such didn't see many visitors. Those who did come were welcomed with open arms and full tankards. It had been a wonderful, peaceful, productive life. Until the survivors came. There were three of them, all starved, exhausted, and scared within an inch of their lives. One of them was insane: gibbering unintelligably, and shying away when others came near; The other two were all too coherent, if worn to the bone. The story they told was a frightening one, a tale of an army, at least three or four thousand soldiers, raging across the land, burning and killing, not stopping to pillage and steal, seemingly intent only on destruction. Jason didn't believe the story at first; he could barely imagine that many people in one place at all, let alone organized as an army. But the somber faces of the villagers as they reinforced their houses and walls soon convinced him that the danger was real. and now, scant days after the newcomers had arrived and taken lodging at Aaron Cahey's house, they could hear the ominous drums and pounding feet that signaled their impending nightmare. Jason curled up, sitting in a fetal position, burying his head in his knees. The candle at his feet shivered and wavered with each beat, before giving a final sputter and dying. Just like he was about to. Give out one final sputter, then burn out, leaving a light cloud of smoke as the only memorial of his being. So be it, then. He listens to the echoing drums and waits, preparing for his turn to give one last burst of flame.

Tunes: "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye", Annie Lennox; "Horseshoes", Moxy Früvous; "Fields of Gold", Eva Cassidy.