I can't describe to you what it is like to be the only light in a world that has gone dark. 

Today I will share this story with you because I am certain death is right outside, knocking at my door with its disgusting fingers. I have spent many an hour lying awake at night planning for this exact moment, but strangely enough, I have still found myself unprepared. 

Our Earth - no, the people's Earth - has had its eyes removed. 

I'm sorry, I am speaking in metaphors. I think all the fear and loneliness has gnawed away at the parts of my brain that were able to think coherently.

About a decade ago, the peaceful world was unexpectedly thrust into a permanent state of night so black that some of the weaker humans could only stand and scream until their voices were gone. After that, those voiceless weak ones simply withered away, overcome by the blinding nothing and the fear. 

Nobody knows how or why it happened, but I somehow suspect they were being punished for their wickedness. Can you believe it? In the beginning, I actually felt sympathy for them. That kind of darkness suffocates you.

But now...

The strong humans remained. What do they call it? Natural selection? Survival of the fittest? Those who pushed through the madness were overcome by madness of a different kind. An obsession. They were filled with such a determination to find sources of light - sources of sight - that it sometimes led them to perform acts so ghastly it makes me hurt all the way through my teeth. 

I hope you will never have to feel that kind of pain. I'm so glad for you because your innocence makes you one of the lucky ones.

I am Aurora. Nice to meet you. 

I hope you will be a friend one day...if we make it out of this alive somehow.

During that first week of darkness, the humans burned anything and almost everything to see the warm glow of a fire. To just see again. Some small fires were made deliberately, while bigger, wilder fires were birthed from the embers and continued to spread of their own accord. It felt like everything around me was just smoke and ash. It soon became clear that, should they carry on that way, the humans would have found themselves dying of starvation, as some of them even burned the crops they originally intended to eat.

So, they turned on us instead, the luminescent creatures of nature. 

They started with the will-o'-the-wisps, who were insectlike animals that emitted natural orbs of light. Wisps could illuminate a whole ballroom when they were in a good mood, you know. They were absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, they were also timid and unintelligent, making them easy to hunt and capture. 

The humans stuck the little things inside lanterns or hung them from doors, watching with glee as their homes were lit up in silver and gold. I bore witness one night as a wisp was tied around a pole at a human gathering, and the poor creature went into such a panic that it strangled itself to death. This was not an unusual occurrence. The cruelty of these humans knows no bounds.

What made it all so much worse is that, as their need for light increased, it seemed as though seeing light was starting to have some kind of euphoric effect on them, like a drug. Some of them would stare at the wisps in their lanterns for hours on end, gaping like fish while the wisps squirmed away in fear. Some humans even became wasteful with their light, using their personal wisp collections to show off to neighbours and later, killing those same neighbours to just have more. Always more and more and more. It was as though light became the new currency - this horrid new way in which the humans could trade wealth. I've always considered them to be selfish and prideful, but this was simply an unfathomable new low for them.

When they ran out of wisps, they turned on the unicorns. I wish you could have seen a unicorn. A story will never be able to do them justice. They have these crystalline wings that are so delicately exquisite they make you catch your breath in pure admiration. 

Yet the humans tore those glowing wings from their backs as though they were pieces of scrap paper. They ground up the wings into glowpowder and used it to once again light their lanterns. Their children slept with those lanterns on their bedside tables. How could they venture off into their dream worlds with pieces of corpses beside them? It makes me sick.

I'd never seen such unnecessary slaughter of innocent creatures.

The humans are monsters, evil and rotted from the scalps of their hairy heads to the tips of their stumpy toes. 

Eventually, they ran out of unicorns too.

Which left only us: the fairies. They had to dig deep inside the caves and forests to find us, but they used sniffer dogs and trackers and I don't even know what else to find even the smallest trails we left behind. They were too smart and too desperate. They needed that euphoria. They needed to boast with their wealth. They needed that comfort in a world that had been dark for years now. 

In the end, they found us.

Our blood contains a pigment that makes it shine a bright, clear pink. I'm horrified to think that they had to cut open one of us before they were able to discover this. It goes to show how desperation breeds corruption. The humans realised that they could bleed us and store our life essence in jars. It could even be frozen to last longer.

How cruel. I shudder to think of my brothers and sisters sitting in a pickle jar somewhere, next to the ice cream and the frozen peas. 

It has been three days since my village was raided; the very last fairy settlement. And just by chance, I had been away during the time, searching for wild fruit on the other side of the forest. I hadn't even heard their screams over the sound of the rushing river beside me.

I returned home to a village that didn't even have ghosts to break the silence.

The sound of my own breathing has never felt so intrusive.

I've looked everywhere, but it seems I'm the only one left. My house is empty. Lonely. 

Mother is gone. 

Father, Brother...Sister...

There is nothing that I can do to help my friends and family because I already know that by now it is too late.

But at least I still have you, my little one. 

But of course, I know they will find me too, no matter how well I hide.

What is that? Do you hear the scratching? The howls?

I can no longer tell if it is my imagination or whether they have found me at last. 

Aurora: The last light. 

But no, it is not my imagination. The door is thrown open and soon their hounds are upon me, biting at my clothes, my hair - anything they can hold onto as I kick and scream. Their monstrous size probably makes my kicks feel like nothing at all. It is no use; I am tied up and tossed into a wooden cart like a bag of trash. 

This is the darkest day of this lightless decade, if not the darkest day that the earth has ever known.

I fade in and out of consciousness as I am rolled and knocked around in the cart that is now being pulled by galloping horses. 

It feels like hours before we come to a stop. My head feels like it may burst from the pain of my bruises. I am pulled to my feet and pushed forward until my legs fall into the rhythm of a brisk walk. 

When we stop, I fall to my hands and knees. I lift my head and gaze forward to take in my surroundings.

It looks like some sort of warehouse. The walls are clinical metal, and the floor beneath my hands is solid concrete. The whole room is lit up with a bright pink glow. I struggle to make out what my eyes are seeing. 

All along the walls, there are rows of metallic beds with pink pipes sticking out of them from every direction and on the beds there are...

There are...

Fairies. Rows and rows of fairies connected to tubes sucking the life from them, bit by bit. One of them, a child from my village, makes eye contact with me and I can see the terror and the pain on her face.

A man, a horrid creature with a mane of hair sprouting from his face and breath so foul I struggle not to gag, bends down in front of me.

"Men, thank you for bringing me this specimen," he smiles from ear to ear. "This one is pregnant, do you see that? We've never had one of these before. I hear they are extra bright when they're in this state."

I have failed you.