“When someone’s heart breaks so does a piece of our world; this creates fissures, valleys, and even cracks in the pavement. Tell me the story behind the Grand Canyon.” Prompt given by @writing.prompt.s on Instagram At the beginning of humanity, love was a concept that didn’t exist. There was great affection among them, it was true. But love wasn’t real. Not yet. The world they lived in was perfect. Unscarred, unblemished. Its perfection was reflected in its inhabitants. People lived peacefully, blissfully conflict-free. There were no wars. No disputes. No disease. Humanity didn’t know the depths of love and the joy it could bring, but neither did they know the counterpart of hatred and it’s greedy, far-reaching grasp. They would learn, in time, that you cannot have one without the other. * Once there was a boy. He was unremarkable, a boy among boys, plain and forgettable. Perhaps he would have been forgotten—were it not for the girl. She, too, lacked extraordinary qualities. Nothing about either of them was remotely special. Except that their affection ran deep, deeper than any other set of humans. They were inseparable. One was not ever seen without the other. The world, already small, was smaller for them, entirely wrapped up in each other. She murmured promises of the life they would have together when they laid in the dark, her voice a whisper of air across his skin that breathed life back into his lungs. Over and over she resurrected him with the vows she made. He danced with her beneath the sun, drew forth her bubbling laughter at whatever cost, certain it was the most beautiful sound in all the world. Nothing could tear them apart. Their love made them different. The rest of humanity watched the way their eyes sparkled when they gazed at each other, and felt the air crackle when they were together, breathing the same breath—her exhale becoming his inhale. Humanity watched the way the couple trembled when their skin touched, awed by the power of human contact. The rest of humanity watched, indeed, with awe, confusion… and envy. Maybe the first person to grow jealous was a girl, prettier or smarter or more desirable. Or maybe it was a boy, certain he deserved the rapt attention of a woman more than any other man. Whoever it was, for whatever reason, they forever scarred the world. Envy, you see, is as destructive as anger, is a precursor for hate and violence in a way that fury is not. Fury can be random, and die as quickly as it exploded into life. Envy burns slowly, inches its way through the veins of its host until it consumes them entirely. And the people were envious. They tried to force the two apart. Tore them from each other’s desperately clinging arms. Cruelty burst forth on the backs of the people’s jealousy in the form of hurled stones, sharpened and stabbing sticks. Blood flowed from the girl in rivers that awakened a furious will to fight in the boy, though he was no better off than her. He flew into a righteous rage, and his anger nearly saved them both. Nearly. One of the wooden stakes was sharp enough to impale the boy. It didn’t matter who thrust that final blow; by the time anyone realized what had happened, he was already falling. He staggered, just for a moment, shocked and amazed at his own death, before he crumpled to the ground in front of his love. The world held its breath. The people all stopped, frozen in surprise at what they had done. The girl stared at the boy as the light left his eyes, and his breath left his body. And then her scream tore the earth in two. On her knees, blood streaking across her skin and staining the ground, tears falling torrentially to the dirt that was already soaked with his blood, her keens made the earth quake beneath their feet. Love had not existed before. Neither had anguish. The world ripped apart, a gouge tearing through the middle of the dirt that made the earth collapse in on itself. A cavernous gash appeared in the ground, growing rapidly, clear down to the center of the earth it seemed. The people tried to flee, and some survived, but most fell to their deaths, found their graves in the wound they had inflicted upon the world. The girl was left with the boy. She knelt by his body at the edge of the tear in the ground. It stretched as far as she could see into the distance, and the gap to the other side was such a wide expanse she knew nothing could ever mend this scar. It was a great and terrible sight… and reflected the breaking of her heart. The girl died that day, beside the body of the boy she loved. And the world was never the same.