Darkness shall cover the earth...

It started slowly, under cover of normal. Natural. The branches on trees withered behind green then gold leaves. Each year, a few more branches would die till a tree was half dead, but enough alive that people just took a second glance wondering if it had been struck by lightening or if it were being eaten by some beetle or bacteria.

Fewer flowers bloomed each year. That was blamed on hungry squirrels digging up bulbs, extra cold winters, too wet springs, too hot summers. Always something…natural.

Over the years, some statisticians somewhere noticed that the world population had stopped growing. Well, of course, people are having children, but fewer and people are dying, but living longer… Makes sense…

A few years after that, they noticed that the population was actually not at a standstill, but was actually decreasing. Well, of course, there’s birth control! Wars! Cancer! Bad economies forcing people to postpone indefinitely starting families… All…natural.

The populations of various members of the animal kingdom began to dwindle: insects like mosquitos, then flies and spiders; rodents like mice, then rats then squirrels and gophers; garden-eating deer; garbage-sifting bears and racoons. No great loss…

Until it was.

Until, one day, spring was just a word with no meaning. No longer was there renewal. Rebirth. Growth…life. Indeed, there was no one to utter the word with joyful wonder, or to wonder with utter anguish…why? All that remained were the trees, bent low, dry and gray, with roots turned to ash in a barren earth.