The Last Human on Earth

So this is it," she peers up at the blackened sky while sitting with perfectly balance on a piece of driftwood. "This has been what you have wanted to see, Ting." 

Su Yu Ting is the last human left on Earth. She looks like she did when she was in her mid-twenties. She's from the North of a Kingdom that laid in the middle of the Earth, or so they thought, the ancient people of the Middle Kingdom. Her silky black hair cut into a bob that was easy to wash, black eyes that are both sharp with too keen of a curiosity for a human and too bleak of a belief in humanity. 

An unremarkable girl. The perfect average human. Discounting the fact that Ting had travelled from the ancient lost Middle Kingdom to another ancient empire that only consisted of a few islands as the empire declined, there is nothing much interesting or special about this human. 

"This is it," the last human sighed. "I don't know what to say except I told you so. We were doomed to end up here."

She let the roaring sea waves quiet around them. There is no more land left on the planet of Earth, the few spikes left that weren't swallowed by the ocean that was ever more hungry till it ate all the major civilizations. One bite after another, a gulp here at the island of Singapore, a chip there at the shores of Los Angeles, a push at the barriers they built up in Shanghai. 

"The water ate all the humans again," She replies, monotone as if she can swallow the disgust rising through her hollowed bones. Her feathers prickling the water around them like little human kids used to tease and trick each other, an innocent play. "Just like the Flood, Noah's Ark. Are you fucking kidding me."

"Welp, this is pretty much it, isn't it?" Ting shrugs and stretches her hand out towards the endless blue. "I know you're probably pissed, but see for yourself. There is nothing left. You are the leader of the Watchers, the Watchers of Mankind. I am pretty sure we just both saw that last raft being smashed by a pretty hard slap. The fishes are probably chewing the bits that are left on the bones."

 The book humans said was her Father's plan promised fire and brimstone, but the truth was that the end of the world was quaint like an oil paint. The sky was a gentle yet stern blue, like the feather of a magpie. Clouds curled like the hair of a human with puffy hair, millenia ago when humanity was still thriving and not surviving. 

This can't be it. She thought, burning flames leaked out her thousand-eyes. It was like dropping a batch of hot coal into cool water. Sizzling sound thunders as if the sea is crying in pain at being burned by the fire. This just can't be it. 

Ting turns her last human head around at her, that eternal smiling mask on the human girl's face softened in sympathy. 

"We both knew this was a long time coming," Ting said quietly. "Even back when it was my time, there were already protests and warnings and scientists calling for the sea level to rise. This girl, Greta Thunberg, she was the same generation as I, she told every human she could reach about this day coming. That was centuries ago, or has it been a millenia?"

Her feathers dip into the sea as if the weight was finally too much. The reality sits in where Ting's finger pointed, a world where the sky and ocean merged into one blue canvas with nothing interrupting the sight other than the smoke that is emitting out around her like a volcano. 

She must look like a natural disaster to Ting. Su Yu Ting has been beside her, sharing the same body as her ever since they made a promise to one another. That girl used to be accompanied by seven billion of her kind. Now stands alone alongside the monster who caused the first Flood of mankind, Ting's gentle hand placed upon her down feathers. 

"But...but you came so far," she wobbled unintelligibly in Enochian. A language she had never spoken ever since she had fallen. "We, the Watchers, thought if we taught humans the knowledge that was forbidden to them, it would make them thrive. That Flood was our fault. It was Father's way of saying you need to figure it out yourselves. Even if it meant war, hunger, famine. Bodies piled up into the high Heavens. Cycles of violence and deaths. Yet, you build skyscrapers, you fly to the moon, you dove into the deepest of this wretched sea. This time, you gained all the knowledge for yourself, you humanity learned the knowledge the right way through trillions of seasons. So how did we end up here again?"

"Hmm," the last human cocks her head to the side as if contemplative. "I guess we did. I mean, even back when I was this age, we thought we had achieved the ultimate stage that humanity could achieve. But then the next generation surprised us, colonising Mars, moving to other galaxies. I know you've been calling me the last human in your head, but I'm just the last human on Earth. There are humans everywhere above that blue sky. Only the descendants of rich billionaires and politicians from my era, of course. But you can't blame the kids for their parents' sin, you know?"

"No, they are not human anymore." She knows Ting was right. Those beings that have inhabited the stars they once gazed upon have the same biological structures as the humans who once dominated this Earth. But they are not humans, not anymore. Once they left Earth where Father had created for them and named her to Watch over them. They are advanced beings, intelligent organisms. But they are not human, they have long evolved past humanity.

Only those who leave behind are humans. She and the last human on Earth just watched them die, eaten by black waves and white foam. 

"I know this is difficult for you," Ting shakes her head and lets out a sigh. "I mean, it probably triggered your past trauma of causing the Flood that wiped out the First humans. But you just had giant babies with a human husband in your, I don't know, angel teenage years? You can't blame yourself for getting pregnant, that wasn't what killed humanity."

"Yes, I didn't." She can feel her feathers steeled into lights that could burn out a human's eyes, but the only human here is Ting and they are sharing a body. "Father did. Father killed all first humans. Father killed my children. Father killed all of you other than that one single fucking human family. even though so many among the First humans were innocent. This is His fault too."

"Nope," Ting shakes her head again. The edge of Ting's chin is stretched a bit too thin, making that shit-eating smile look almost pitious towards her. "This is humanity's fault. 100%. I mean, with how we treated nature and stuff. All the big corporations and their exploitation of nature. Like I said, doomed. I had a girlfriend, you know? Grace, geez, it was so long ago. But I think she said we humans all deserve to die, not because whether individually we deserve to die or not, but that as a species we decided to turn a blind eye."

"Of course I remember your fucking ex girlfriend," She retorted in anger while rolling about a hundred out of a thousand of her eyes. "I was there when you sent her ghost away. I was there ever since you were eighteen, last daughter of men. Tell me, why?"

"Why what?" Ting replies casually despite fully knowing the answer she seeks. 

"Why with all the knowledge in the universe finally laid out all in front of you humans, do you still hurt each other till it comes to this?" 

Ting laughed. It was like a single chirp of a bird flying across the tundra, so tiny yet echoed throughout the deserted land. The last human standing there on a swift-wood. 

Half of Ting and her body was still Ting, still that human girl in her mid-twenties with a smiling mask and casual towards anything life might throw at her. As the half of her body morphed with the entity that was once a fallen angel, the leader of the Watchers of humanity who fell because they fell in love with humans and had offspring as tall as the mountains. 

"Semyaza," Ting said as the laugh slowly died into a kind and familiar smile. "I used my entire life and existence to answer that question of yours. If you still haven't learned, then I really have nothing more to say."

She's right, thought Semyaza. Xu Yu Ting lied in life, she manipulated others, she almost sold a boy's soul to Death for a single answer. But this last human also stayed by her side. Long after Ting's own death, long after the death of everything Ting knew and belonged to. All because of a promise made millenia ago.

"I'm sorry I can't do much to consult you, Uzza." Ting murmurs as the last human soul begins to make its way up to the afterlife. "I know I promised I'd stay with you and Watch until the end. But I don't seem to have helped you at all. Angel of Empathy, my friend, you are still saddened at the death of humanity."

"No, you're wrong." Semyaza replies as the last human soul's fingers are pulled away by wind from her burned feathers. She cupped Ting's cheeks and left a single kiss on the human girl's forehead. "With memories of you, I will always have humanity by my side."

 That last human on Earth was possessed by a supernatural entity that is now crying into the endless blues.