Score: 10
"Beautiful"
date: July 20, 2008
A samurai is sitting beneath the cherry blossoms in the early evening. leaves are drifting down from the trees. He reaches up to grab a few, seems to examine them, and lets the wind take them away. The samurai then stands up, and begins to walk.
The camera cuts to a vast field at sunrise. Rice is growing here, but it obviously has not been tended for a long time; the stalks are enormous, seeming almost as tall as the samurai. In the distance, you can see the wreckage of a few humble huts, blasted and destroyed by a nameless foe.
Next, the samurai is walking through a desert. It is midday, and the sun glares down on him like the eye of some forgotten god. You can barely see ancient statues and ruins rising out of the sand, scarred and pitted by the ravages of time.
Finally, the samurai is walking along a broken highway. What appears to be cars are scattered along the edges, though they are twisted almost beyond recognition. The samurai reaches a cliff, stops, and looks up. As the camera zooms out, you can see the remains of an unspeakably vast city, the fires of war slowly erasing it from the earth.
That's the image(s) that popped into my head when I heard this. Good going!