Blast
BEFORE THERE WAS WATER, there was an explosion. Earlier than the oldest tale, fire and night were all there was. Without water, fire could not be put out. Darkness was everywhere, but Alvarado was used to it, for dark was the place where he had been born. It was like an everlasting winter void of any wind or snow, lacking any creatures with bright, vivid eyes and clear of any lights that might cross the blue from time to time. It was a night so silent that it would have hurt the ears of anyone trying to hear it. Alvarado had never tried, for that was the only place he had ever known. The presence of such an eternal eclipse was so familiar that when Alvarado saw the fire for the first time, his eyes burned at the very sight.
There was an explosion. There was never an explanation for it. All Alvarado knew when he tried to recall it was that his body was suddenly surrounded by rivers of burning particles. Even though the deafening silence was left unbroken, an ocean of hot, blazing waves appeared and turned that darkness into light. It was the biggest explosion that man would ever know- or so we were told, no one can remember. It was the fire that created a day without a night, a day with no end, a day without a name, and a day without time.
Debris flew in all directions, hitting Alvarado’s body and wounding his flesh as he crawled, trying to escape the flames; bleeding, with barely enough time to move fast, he was soon out of breath, gasping for what little oxygen was left in the air. The pieces where Alvarado grew up disappeared in a millionth of a second. It felt like the very end. He picked up a torn knapsack with some tools and ran. There was a lighter too. Alvarado held it in his hand and found himself smiling with his face reflected on its smooth, steel surface. It was, in fact, the very beginning.
What Alvarado didn’t realise, was that he was holding the cause of the explosion. That lighter contained the fire that could make light but that could also burn all.
Alvarado rolled the object into his pocket. Maybe he could have tried to put out the conflagration and save the place he came from. But the reality was that had he tried, he would have failed. There was no water there and had there been any, Alvarado would not have known what to do with it in time.
“I must find water. I really must,” he gasped as he resumed running, ignoring the limits of what he thought he could achieve.
It was during his escape that Alvarado wondered for the first time if he had always lived on his own or if others shared what was now being consumed by that great fire. But there was no time to check, only just enough time to flee a death that would have been certain had he slowed down at all.
Alvarado ran with the same speed as those flaring angels erasing his past behind him, and even when it seemed safe to slow down, he only sped up.
“Am I the only survivor?” Alvarado asked himself at last. But he just didn’t know.
Alvarado didn’t learn it that day, or the day after, or many more days later. He only discovered it when time passed and the time was right. In fact, Alvarado only realised it when his daughter Melisa set him right.
