oblivion ; minsung

"as the crows watched"

once there was a young girl
who feared she was going insane
nightmares beset her sleep
violent thoughts consumed her mind
and black birds watched her from the trees

one day the girl saw an old woman
and the woman looked back
and the two knew
they had known each other
longer than time itself

they fought with hands, nails and teeth
perished as one under burning skies
in pools of blood
with blossoming skin
skin like gossamer
and earth welcomed their bodies
back into her embrace
while life and death
continued on
evermore

──

All Minho can see is black. It isn't the darkness behind his eyelids or the darkness in a room without light — it's a void. An abyss. Nothing. He's surrounded by nothing. Trying to move is an infinite weight and a thousand-year journey. There are words screaming in his ears, clawing through his skin, burrowing into his bones.

For just a second, there's a flash of light. He struggles toward it, trying to move without a body, trying to see without eyes. The shape is a figure. A human made of light, like the one in his dreams. The presence is palpable, emanating — so strong, so there, a force like ice-cold wind.

Please, he hears himself say, his voice echoing in the Dark — help me.

Maybe he's falling or maybe he's hit the ground. The Dark stretches and folds and flows, consumes and crushes and rebuilds. His cells are all wrong, his cells have changed. They've seen creation and evolution and apocalypse, abided by animal flesh and morning condensation and unknowable dark matter.

He falls upside-down, through the ground and lands on his hands and knees, and his body is suddenly real again, all his edges inward. He pulls air down his throat, filling his spasming lungs. There's dirt in his mouth. His eyes are blurred. His heart is racing. For a moment he thinks he's having a heart attack. Then he thinks he's drowning. Drowning on air. It feels like acid.

A sound — a screech. He flinches hard, clutching his head in his hands. An oil-black crow is there before him, staring at him. Calm, curious, inches from his face. It settles back, bowing its head as if in reverence.

Minho reels backward, pushing himself away with his feet. There are crows everywhere. Mice and deer and beetles too. His back hits something hard — a tree, half-fallen, sloping away from him, bark gnarled and sickly grey. The whole forest is on a slant, as if an explosion hit it from the centre outward. The tree canopy is a perfect frame for the ring of fire in the night sky. A solar eclipse.

A shout brings him back to earth. There's a body on the other side of the surging creek, a halo of light surrounding it. The figure from the Dark. The one from his dreams.

Jisung.

He's coughing, laying in a bed of moss, ferns and budding flowers. The forest floor has come alive around him, radiating divine light.

Minho says his name without thinking. Jisung slowly raises his head, takes in the animals and the roiling creek and fiery eclipse. His eyes meet Minho's. So much passes between them, all questions, no answers.

And then something else. Jisung's eyes change.

He staggers to his feet and moves toward Minho. The animals clear a path for him. He walks straight into the creek, through the angry waist-high water. Minho is crawling toward him too, standing on shaky knees. He has a thousand words on his tongue but all that comes out is an "Are you okay?" His own voice sounds so faraway. "Jisung, are you okay?"