They Looked Up and Saw a Brilliant Light

Radiant and depthless, the light filled the sky above them. In the fields, a worker laid down his basket and looked up in wonder. A mother stepped from her home with child on her hip, and both watched the glow fill their world. It overwhelmed even the sparks of the blacksmith's hammer and she dropped her tools to gaze into that endless luminance.   There was the light, and there were the petals. Shards of sharper white on white, they whirled through the air like leaves on an unseen stream. Endlessly, the petals fell from the great tree which towered over their town. The tree which had grown so bright it was all they could see, all they could think of, all they could know.   For a moment, the tumbling petals briefly formed a face against the luminance. It was not the face of a man nor of a woman. Were it not so vast, spreading from one edge of vision to the other, it might have seemed human. Its eyes, each a maelstrom of flowers, looked upon them in turn. One after another. None were spared its gaze. None survived it. The expression it showed them was not grave nor solemn. It was a rictus of profound betrayal and grief.   When it was done, the light subsided and the petals fell to the ground. Each of them lay then where they once stood. Unmoving. Unbreathing. Everything that was them stolen away by that endless light. In a final act of mercy, the white scales on the ground began to shift; each one lifted by a thousand unseen palms. The petals fell upon the bodies of those who were consumed until it resembled a white cloth covering the fullness of their bodies. A burial shroud.