Perfection is its only description. Soft grass speckled with boundless colors of flowers stretching on to the eternity past trees that seclude this safe haven. Lush, full-bloom leaves surround the endless-cloudless-blue sky reflecting breathless peace that has so often been sought. Nothing left to be desired as even the bark of the encompassing towers and the brush of foliage at their base are so full of life that any bearing witness can only be humbled.
A friendly breeze brushes across your skin as picturesque as the fresh scent of untouched nature it carries. Songs of dancing blades of grass and playful leaves fill the air with the smile you cannot wipe from you face.
Your heart is lifted from your chest as if pulled by the very call of Serenity that is so plentiful in this place.
The wind urges you to dance, lifting your hair from your shoulders and cascading around you to teach you the rhythm; following its own lead into circles, twirls, light leaps into the pillowing grass. Laughter escapes the calming silence for a time before you realize it is your own, but this world joins each steady breath until the very sky rings with Happiness.
With a single breath it is gone and the once companionable, whispering breeze falls away as you are left alone.
But you are not.
You had not seen her before; so caught up in relief you must have been and yet you know better. She had not always been there- standing before you across the clearing. Barefooted in a white dress that caught in the air at her knees; her brown hair flitted around her as it fell in lengths down her back. Something in you longed to see her face though it was bent into a bouquet of flowers that could only have come from such a place as this.
As if reaching to your unsaid calling, her eyes- you find they are the blue of the sky as night falls –lift to meet your own.
In that moment; everything stops.
Frozen in time as with the wind, the bouncing leaves, the waving grass and fawning flowers; you cannot break the spell.
She blinks and the world is restarted again.
But this is not the place you once were.
Where there were once welcoming trees that whistled with the playful breeze; there was not only an impenetrable barricade of fire. The flames burst out in every direction and licked at the ground in a perfect circle around the both of you. Grass that felt as if you walked on air began to harden, crumble at the heat’s continuous waves; discolored and wilting as the darkened flowers that couldn’t last. Air became as thick as the smoke that swallowed the sky in a whirl of clouding darkness.
You found yourself catching your breath on the stench of death and decay that fire sought as companions, but your sight of the girl was never interrupted.
Nor was her piercing gaze. It, instead, bore deeply into your eyes as if she was searching for the soul inside you.
It was comforting. A feeling of Companionship calmed you in this maelstrom of hate and cruelty pressing in around you; like even now, surrounded, you were not alone.
A tentative smile ghosted on your face to pull the edges of dried lips. It was becoming hot, oppressive, heavy, hard to breathe and yet she remained- loyal -by your side.
Hesitantly, she seems tempted to return the assurance, the slightest of twitches at her mouth's corner, but a movement within the writhing, burning flower behind her catches your eyes and the shift brings with it a sudden Fear.
No other warning can prepare you for the horror following such a simple revelation. The billowing flames part for sharp, cruel claws; their color only found in the heartless black of shadows.
Shouts of warning shove forcefully against the cement brick in your throat. Legs are locked in place, unable to move forward. Tears form in your eyes from the building smoke pulling the breath from your lungs in turn with the unstoppable situation unfolding before you.
You watch. Her fear becomes palpable as she bursts into movement.
The bouquet- the only remaining proof of the heaven taken from you -is thrown to the ground with the first step she sets towards you. Hands now free to reach stretch to you.
Flames eagerly swallow the ground she leaves behind with each lifted foot. Bare feet race the merciless coals in a desperation that is all too plain on her face.
The darkness follows; it’s warped claws teasing the edges of her dress as the fabric withers at its touch.
Blue eyes become magnified behind the tears forming with the pleas cried out to you in the uninterrupted silence. The roaring thunder remains prevalent as her voice is buried in its malicious chant.
An unfamiliar hand lifts from you in an aborted stretch towards hers; breath caught in witnessing what lies ahead. Pulse rising, painfully pressing your very heart against the ribs encasing it. You can’t reach her. You can’t hear her. You can’t speak to her.
You can’t save her.
Nothing can.
The relentless shadow coils around her ever reaching form.
Her hand is mere inches from what must be your own.
The searing burn is closing in around you.
Darkness has her in its grasp and you are helpless to the pure terror in that gaze; the waterfall of tears.
Time stops again.
Her voice remains soundless in the nothingness, but you can read the plea on her dry lips.
I don't want to go.
She is torn away into the fire that bares no mercy to the screams echoing around you. Her absence extinguishes the fire in an instant sweep of wind.
What follows fire is ice.
Shivering at the suddenly frigid air, you spin frightened eyes around you at the wasteland that has been left behind.
Frozen shards hang in dangerous spikes from barren branches of dead wood encompassed by twisted vines prickled with thorns. An empty, voided sky of gray falls into the biting fog trapping you in its senseless grasp as it casts its own monotonous- almost blinding -gray. Grass blackened and cutting, blanketed by frost presses sharply into your feet.
Hopeless. Empty.
There is nothing here for you.
Silence grips your heart even as it gasps for air covered by your trembling hands attempting to guard the beating warmth; the only sign of life in this void. Quiet, Endless, Punishing, Painful, Scourging-your-very-soul, Deafening, Silence.
Nothing.
But that’s not true. There’s a light; color in the torturing emptiness.
The bouquet.
It lie abandoned on the frozen floor and yet, you can so easily recall the fire greedily devouring it before the first leaf could brush the ground.
You don’t know what calls you to it and cannot resist the pull urging you to lightly grasp the untouched stems that had once been engulfed inflames.
As you reach for the sole color in the gray wasteland, you once again catch sight of the unfamiliar hand that is your own along with the white dress, singed at its edges just above your knees. Bare. soot-covered feet shift to lift you from your bend; flowers in hand.
They are just as beautiful as you remember. Your mind drifts longingly back to the fading meadow before another shiver harshly forces you back into the silence-silence-endless-silence.
Tighter, your grip clutches the memory of what once was; what you would do anything to return to.
Your heart steadies when you heed the call to breathe. Hints of what the breeze first carried teases your senses and you thoughtlessly bury your nose in the colors. Letting your tears water them.
Close your eyes. Maybe you’ll remember. Maybe it’s not lost. Maybe you’re not lost too.
Too soon- too soon to have remembered please let me remember -there is an interruption of the forced haven you created that causes your attention to shift.
It is with merely a peak that you cast your glance ahead; unwilling to fully let go of the stolen memory of only slightly tainted nature still swirling in you lungs.
She is there. Where you once stood. She is there.
You are not alone.
Your mind can barely recall what that Loyalty and Companionship felt like, but you held tightly to those whispers as you did the flowers in your hand.
But they were no longer there.
Frantic eyes find them almost instantly in her hold.
Betrayal.
Black and writhing and confusing and why.
There is nothing in her midnight blue gaze that reflected the sun setting in yours. No innocent joke. No explanation. No remorse. No mirthful laughter. No hateful glare. No. No No. Nothing.
But why? You don’t understand. You can't understand. You don't want to.
As if to feed the rising Panic within you while facing what you didn’t know you feared, the fire returned with heat and rolling thunder to shame its previous visit.
Hatred fueled the twisting, rigid flames. It filled your heart in the hole Betrayal created by shattering your Hope.
You felt the unbridled Rage cast fury into your gaze. It consumed you completely.
Almost.
Hope is not so easily crushed.
But Maybe it should be.
Anger faded into Regret, but that faded even faster as shadows caught the edges of your tear-blurred vision. Realization hit you as hard, if not more so than the suffocating hold of the warped hand that now had you in its grasp.
Screams tore from your throat as you cried out for the one you once trusted. Hope fought with such ferocity, it put your own bid for freedom to shame.
Struggling with everything you have despite the absence of the air that had always been there for you.
The coiling shadows were relentless in your capture even as you reached towards what you prayed was salvation, tears being dried before even leaving your eyes.
She stands emotionless. Her once expressive eyes empty; observant as she kept a light grip on the bouquet.
You are drug towards the unknown behind you.
The world is devoured by the Hatred that is stealing you away.
You're torn off your feet at you last effort to escape and are pulled into the searing reds and oranges and yellows.
She watches.
Then she speaks.
The world ends with her voice and becomes darkness.
Nothing surrounds you; void in every direction. Soundless. Scentless. Sightless. Silent. Touching only air. No heat. No cold. No breeze.
Numb...
All that is left is gone...Numb.
Her words come back to you even as you drift.
Don’t worry. You’re already dead.
Numb.
Recent Comments