The sky had been clear, fully revealing the amber and fading golden that spread from its horizon.
Mira had remembered the way the sunlight bathed the sea water the washed on the sand by the beach house veranda.
The house belonged to another era, a modest one were railings were carved by hand and not bought already made by factories with autonomous machines. It was once bright, but now gently mellowed by decades of rain.
Her grandmother had loved that about it. "Things made patiently," she once said, "age well."
The doctor's report trembled in her hands as her mind quaked, refusing to accept the words on it even when she had read it upside down already. No matter the orientation, the verdict remained same.
Cancer of the blood.
It wasn't an untreatable disease, but it might have well have been with their finances.
Mira read the last paragraph and felt like throwing up. The words were no longer words and were now runes of doom. It said a month, a few at best and tomorrow at worst. That was how long her grandmother had, until nature overpowered will and the body resigned.
Mira did not wail, she just sobbed quietly enough to show that her tears had broken her dam of resistance and she could no longer hold it.
Her grandmother sat by her side in a wicker chair, staring peacefully at the glowing sea as if nothing had changed. Wrinkles folded along her face, like earnings for each year she had lived. The calm in her eyes confused Mira. It wasn't the despair she had seen in the eyes of people who knew the date of their death, this was completion.
"Mira," her grandmother mother saw calmly, trying to comfort her grandchild. Not with an essay of words, but with her name.
"It's not fair," Mira said, sobs blurring her voice.
Her grandmother didn't deny it, maybe it truly wasn't, considering that she hadn't lived the life she envisioned, but Mira was not to know that.
"Life is not fair, I thought I've said that a thousand times already," the smile on her face was warming.
Mira though so, but didn't feel warmed by it. She crumpled the papers slowly, hoping destruction would solve matters. "You're too young."
Her grandmother laughed. "Don't be absurd child, sixty four is not young."
" It's not old enough to die either," she said with harder insistence. "You haven't even since–"
The words annoyed her grandmother as they started, of course she didn't show it, but her voice thickened a bit. "I've seen enough."
The statement held meanings that Mira could not understand, and would likely not for decades to come.
Her grandmother's eyes flashed with memories, blissful ones. "I saw your father grow from wearing diapers to graduating school, and then marrying your mum. Sabastian was stubborn, he bit of more than he could fit in his mouth, let alone chew," she chuckled, " and then I saw you guys, your brother and yourself. I saw a generation that a few more years wouldn't have."
She inhaled deeply. "This is what I desire."
Mira grabbed her grandmother's hand as if she was going to disappear. " Don't... don't you get it? This isn't just ab-about you, I...I haven't seen enough, I haven't seen enough of you. You can't just... leave."
Her grandmother did not argue, she couldn't. She simply reached up with her other hand and patted Mira on the head, tenderly, with love only a mother could give. It was the way she had done it years ago, when thunder still frightened Mira.
Silence remained long enough, until the sun fully dipped beyond the horizon. The sky's gold died completely and the memory loosened.
The beach house dissolved into lackluster smoke and the sea flattened into the reigning dark.
***
The corridor snuck back into view, feeling more forlorn than before. It almost sympathised with her. Her cheeks had dried now, but her heart hadn't. The emotions were so strong that she tasted sea salt in her saliva.
Yet it felt just as wrong as it felt right. In ways that... that her mind stuttered to comprehend.
The owl perched several steps behind her, with its eyes teeming with complexities. It watched the corridor rumble again with imperceptibly tremors.
She turned to it, flat in expression. "What about that binds me?"
The owl spread it feathers to cover more of the branch. "The fact that you cannot accept nature taking its course."
She shrugged the creeping sense of foreboding off. She wanted to speak, but remained silent in the end.
"Prepare," the owl said. "Time is insufficient."
Mira stared ahead, finally feeling the concept of time, fleeting as it was. She was meant to be steeled here, but her past had betrayed her will and left her the same.
In front of her, she saw shadows break through the corridor and roars tingle in her ears. She felt smaller than she ever had, but nodded nevertheless.
Not because of confidence, but because she had to simply affirm.
***
Pluto's eyes had reddened, and his muscles bloodshot. His will had been enough to keep fighting, but his body hadn't been. It had succumbed to strain that Pluto had yet to experience.
He was down. Not kneeling, struggling to remain conscious. The horn's crushing sensation had long past, but he had no idea why he wasn't dead.
The shadow of the rhino was still over him, but for the first time was skidding backwards from a relentless barrage of ink spears.
Its chitin armour was cracked and dark flesh revealed it beneath. Black blood trickled down the seams and mixed with mud. Some blood belonged to its cronies, but most was its.
Ronan and Khalifa stood a few metres away, grating heavily with fatigue that would never leave fully.
The rhino was still within a yard of Pluto's laying body. The mark on his arm still affected its ability to think, filling it with rage and insanity.
The rhino pawed against ground and prepared to stomp again, this time, right on Pluto's chest. It snorted and steam shot out from its nostrils. The anger in them infected the humid mist, dragging the temperature a degree upwards.
Khalifa swallowed. She knew that whatever attempts they made would be futile in protecting him for a sunken chest, and maybe cardiac arrest.
Ronan tried to summon a spear and rush at it, but the ink ignored him and his legs because strangers.
The rhino raised it leg high, savouring the look of surrender of the face of Ronan and Khalifa.
Then as it brought them down –
Space fractured with a mild ripple.
A figure appeared at the edge of Khalifa's periphery, a good twenty metres away from Pluto. Then it vanished again.
It's speed was not blitzing power, it was a universal cheat code that bridged space along with its host.
It reappeared again, three metres away from Pluto this time. And back the time the rhino's stomp had just started to sink into Pluto's chest, the figure had reached him.
In a single fluid motion, it caught unto Pluto and vanished.
The hooves struck the ground with thunderous force, propelling mud metres into the air. A measly crater was left when the rhino took its paws off the ground.
But it didn't do so to check whether its victim had been squashed. It did so to recalibrate, to change target since its primary opponent had been folded into space.
Khalifa and Ronan blinked in baffling awe. The forest was strange, but this just raised the bars.
Ronan gasped hoarsely, watching the bulldozer rock towards them. "Run!"
They did, although their speed was more like jogging. A hundred and one bones creaked per second and misaligned with each rasp breath.
The rhino would catch up to them in seconds. And would then proceed to turn them to pancakes under its weight.
Khalifa flicked her hand, rolling out a wave of distortion that did absolutely nothing to impede the charge of the rhino.
Ronan dragged her to the side, preventing her back from behind clipped by its horn. They moved in zigzags, but the rhino didn't lose chase. And that was expected, since they stumbled forward rather than sprinted.
Ronan waved his hands, throwing a weak splash of ink that just bathed the massive predator.
Behind them, space spewed out the figure again, with Pluto in its grasp. It did not look back at them, instead clutched its chest briefly, them vanished again.
They kept running and the rhino kept chasing. But the more time went, the slower the rhino ran until it didn't anymore. It whizzed heavily and trembled around its limbs.
Oddly strange.
Then after a while of murderous glaring, it retreated into the treeline.
"It worked..." Ronan whispered to himself, more curious than happy.
Khalifa collapsed onto her side, fainting and waking up again in the same instant.
Ronan joined her, falling gracelessly unto his bottom.
Neither spoke, neither rejoiced. They simply breathed, and confirmed that the breath came from the living.
***
The figure teleported once more, clutching its chest again as they appeared. Too many jumps in space had proved too much.
It lowered Pluto onto solid ground, making sure the spot's visibility was low.
Pluto had finally embraced the dark, unresponsive to the figure's stern gaze.
After a moment, it pressed two fingers against Pluto's throat, searching for a pulse.
There was one, faint nonetheless. But it was hope that he wasn't dead.
His mark was quiet for now, but the figure knew that window of silence was short.
Because, as the owl had said, time was insufficient.