• Dark and cold, no light, and only the dull thud of something moving overhead, above and beyond reach. No, not beyond reach. In the solid darkness, something moves. In the blackness, something stirs.

    Everything strives. This is no exception. Struggling for life, struggling for light and air, it presses on through the black, through crushing darkness. Continues, because that is all it can do, to hope for survival. There is no other option. To despair is to die.

    Just before hope fails, it bursts into the light. The first breath of freedom, and it unfolds under the sun. Life. Warm light gives new strength and the small shoot from the seed underground will become a rose in time. One day its blooms will be taken and given as a token of love. In undying symbolism it will spend forever as a memory of promise and eternal love.

    A shadow falls, and suddenly a huge weight falls on the fragile newborn. Crushing and twisting, tearing it from the earth and pulling it from the ground the huge mass lifts, dropping the crumpled, bleeding carcass on the unfeeling pavement.

    Such is life.