The sunset was bolder than usual that evening, a deep indigo streaked with Dutch orange, fuchsia, and saffron. You barely noticed, hurrying as you were. You were on your way to meet a friend, or you were rushing to the corner store for that last dinner ingredient, or maybe you were training for a 10K, getting in a quick jog before it grew too dark.
When a crack—like shattering glass—sounded from above, you looked up. Shards of color were raining down upon you, and you raised an open hand as if you could catch them. Your skin tingled where it touched the falling sunset.
But when you closed your fist and opened it again, your palm was empty.
In the weeks after the Shattering, all the TV personalities and podcasters and social media stars shared their theories. You read articles punctuated with graphs predicting the long-term effects. You watched the Here’s Everything You Need to Know About the Shattering recaps in the form of flashy 30-second videos. You discussed it with your friends and your coworkers and your kids.
At night, you watched the sky darken to ultramarine, then midnight blue, then obsidian. You waited to see if the other colors would return.
Eventually, you learned to accept the unknowing. None of the scientific-sounding explanations felt right, and all of the spiritual ones sounded retconned. Your grandmother or your best friend or that-person-you’d-been-seeing-that-you-weren’t-ready-to-label-yet sent you a link to a poem that had gone viral. It was melancholy and beautiful, lamenting the sunset you might never see again.
But that, too, faded from your mind. There was only so much energy you could spend thinking about a strange event that hadn’t changed anything. Life continued, and you moved on with it.
All those glimmers of color seeped into the soil, infused the oceans. The land and the water harbored it, swelled with it, carried it like a pregnant person carries a growing child.
And when the carrots fattened in the dirt, when the roots of the apple trees soaked up the water, when fresh stalks of corn sprang from the ground, they, too, carried the glimmer.
You harvested the crops with calloused hands, or you bought them from a farmer’s stand, or you plucked them from a display at the grocery store. You cleaned and prepared and arranged the food on your plate. Or someone else—a parent, a partner, a chef—did the work for you.
You sat before your meal and took a bite. Then another, and another.
You noticed nothing strange. Every day, you ate, swallowing traces of glimmer with every bite.
It was easy to dismiss at first. A mauve flush to your cheeks when you glanced at yourself in the mirror, about to apply a new technique that had looked good on your favorite beauty influencer. An amber tinge to your hand, gripping the steering wheel as you drove home from work, singing along to the latest hit song. An iridescent fleck in your lover’s eye the first time they said they loved you.
Always shortly before the sun dropped below the horizon, always gone when you blinked.
You felt different, too, but that could be explained away. The new lightness was because your English teacher had cried when reading your essay about finding your way back after a bout of depression. Or because you’d finally learned that tricky sequence just in time for your piano recital. Or because your grandson had called just to see how you were; and when you admitted you were struggling with the newly empty house, he began texting you a silly new doodle every morning to make you smile.
You noticed you’d begun listening to more music; started experimenting when you cooked and baked. At work, you’d be hit with a burst of inspiration, and as soon as your break began, you’d write, or draw, or transcribe that song you’d been composing in your head. You picked up your guitar, a paintbrush, a book for the first time in years.
You began to stare up at the sky more often, wondering. At night, you dreamt that everyone you loved had become faces in the clouds, and sometimes, when you woke, the air carried the scent of fresh rain. Your skin had grown paler, almost translucent. Once, you saw a child let go of a balloon. You watched it float up, up and away, and you thought how very peaceful it looked.
That last day, you knew something was coming. You couldn’t have said what it would be, but you felt it in the lightness of your step, the hollowness of your bones. You listened to your favorite song one more time, or you wrote the last lines of your poem, or you brewed yourself a cup of tea and sipped it, slowly.
When the sun sank that evening, you took your child’s hand. You linked arms with your partner. You stood alone and raised both your arms to the sky. Heart full, you closed your eyes and took one last breath as you, together, floated up to the clouds, leaving the earth behind.
