Embers ◂ Poe Dameron

02. 𝐖retched farewells

𝐓𝐖𝐎

❝What matters most is how well you walk through the fire ❞ - Charles Bukowski

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ARKANIS, 23 ABY

❖━━━━━━⋇ during the siege, part two

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EVERYTHING WAS BATHED in red. Flames tinged the world with blood and rust, giving way to a battle between rising particulates of charcoal and smoke as an aroma of pure heat devoured the hellish sky. Cinders floated lazily down like falling snow without innocence, blanketing the ground in a layer of suffocating ash.

Some wretched part of Amelia Hux thought that she might have been prepared for this, rejoicing in the vain dissolution that her fuchsia-tinged gaze was ready to fall upon the brutal consequences of war like it was just another two-dimensional storybook. But now, death filled her nose, and she couldn't have been more vulnerable as it became increasingly hard not to believe that her own bones were aflame.

Because no one ever mentions the petrifying odor of a burning corpse, the noxious toxins of charring muscular tissue, the gruesome sulfur of flaking skin filaments, and the coppery iron of blood vessels dissolving into ash. Once flesh ignites it is impossible to escape from, dooming all in its presence to spend the rest of their lives knowing what it smells like to be enveloped in agonizing heat, and it doesn't take long for a single sense to illustrate an entire portrait of what it feels like to smolder as well.

The blackened ground before the redheaded girl's feet was hot against the leather of her boots as she leapt around small clusters of flame in a sort of feverish dance, edging her way towards the crash site. While rain had dampened the effects of the explosion, sweat beaded across her skin from the unnatural temperature, almost as if each and every molecule of air had been seared into oblivion

Wrapping a faded scarf around her nose, Amelia tried not to inhale as regret gnawed inside of her, yet as desperately as she wanted to she couldn't look away.

The X-wing itself seemed to melt before her horrified eyes, peeling paint only serving as tinder to spark against the red-hot metal of the starship, which had become a deathtrap for the creature within the cockpit. The glowing shell would have almost been beautiful if it weren't a casket, illuminating the pilot in its core with an ethereal glow.

Though distortions shimmered over the image as heat formed an unsettling mirage, lack of the glass dome which had once sealed the ship gave her a clear view of the Duros inside. Even motionless, lidded eyes glued shut in the haunting, candescent aura, it was hard not for the girl to picture the way this creature had such a short time ago been full of joy and the thrill of space upon their skin, before being cocooned in a welded exoskeleton they would never emerge from.