The cimmerian gloom had lifted.

Once the mines ran out, the workers began, dolefully, to leave. The sound of rock breaking was slowly replaced by the woodpecker’s tapping, the buzzing of bees, the occasional rustle. The mine shafts began to look human, like open mouths drinking rain.

Man-made paths shrank, vanishing into the underbrush.

The foxes returned, and then the nesting robins.

One night, the fireflies reappeared—a galaxy adrift under open skies.

They moved like the lanterns of the last miners, a caravan descending into the dark.

Soon, there was no trace of man, only life living in quiet rebellion.