People exhaust me, not because they mean harm, but because they are the same, like a terribly written movie. they laugh, argue and chat in their groups thinking they're standing out but it's just the same copies, the serious one, funny one, mother of the group. I watch them and feel like I've lived this day a thousand times and all it has is the same characters but with different names and attitudes. the weight of it pulls me down, and the world blurs, unreal, like a backdrop peeling and showing the stage lights behind it.
I raise my head across the row of people in lecture hall through the window and catch a tree falling to an axe. Blow after blow until the trunk surrendered and the body collapsed into the earth. Another story finished. I think about the noise around me, the chatter that the teacher doesn't catch, the noise from the endless bleating of routine as people walk out
"Don't forget to submit your essays this Friday?"
No verbal response but the continuous rustle book papers as they were tossed in bags and proceeded out the class. I scooched over to the window seat now open and for a moment wonder: if it vanished, all the clutter of the modern world, would people finally find depth, or would the silence only prove how hallow they are?
A thought that doesn't linger long as a military grade jet passes over head. The sky turning darker, low and behold a ball of fire tumbling to the crust, tearing through the ozone. Explosions go off but to no avail, panic spreads as people scamper their heads no longer watching the sky in aww as they logged onto live streams.
When it struck, the earth convulses, the giant walls of the institute flattened in a matter of seconds, heat searing into my lungs, rubble having crushed my motor means, the crowd dissolving into shadow and flame. my ears fill with a roar too vast to be called a sound and for a heartbeat ii almost believe the silence I longed fore had finally arrived
Pain like none other beamed through my veins, no voice escaping my already charred throat, but then
QUIET
The weight lifted, slow and deliberate, until I felt myself loosen, slipping out of the body I had struggled so hard to maintain. The fire still roared but it no longer touched me. My soul drifted free and in the stillness that followed, I found peace I had never known in life.
The darkness thinned and I opened my eyes to a field of grass that rippled under an unseen sky. At its centre stood a large tree, tall and alone, branches reaching upwards and side to side forming a circular shade on the ground. I was seated at its roots resting against its trunk as if I had always belonged there
A breeze moved though the quiet air, cool and gentle, brushing against my face. I breath it in, surprised at the clarity in my chest. Ny lips parted and the words escaped almost of their own record:
"Cold hand of death"
The wind stirred again, lifting the blades of the grass into a soft wave, I let a faint smile touch my face.
"How they have misjudged you" slipping into a light slumber
That's when I heard it-soft, deliberate steps through the grass. They stopped right behind me. A presence settled into the shade, close enough that I could feel the shift in the air.
"How poetic you make me sound"
A voice matures, yet calm
"You must be Dain ?"