They Are Made From Lightning

TWO (二)

note: for a short period of time, Tora was named Audree - but I've changed it back to the original name because I've deemed it more fitting! apologies for any confusion x 

二

two

Tora

A secret is something you keep – mostly to yourself. But what happens henceforth is entirely up to you. You either eat it up, digest it well, or you let it eat at you.

This secret still gestated in Tora. It hadn't begun eating her up yet, but neither had she decided whether or not to accept it. Despite the fact that it'd been bubbling away deep in crevices below her surface, it hadn't solidified just yet.

It was hard to keep the secret. It was hard to describe it.

It began just like this.

That night, the final round of fights had died down, and the once-pristine boxing ring became a canvas for sweat and blood. The final coat of paint had been applied on Tora's last finger. For many, that was when the night came to a dazzling close. Time to pack up, to collect their winnings. To go home.

For Tora, the night had merely begun.

The moment she stepped out of Wing's, she saw the stars. It was a clear night, and constellations blossomed like daisies in flower fields. As much as she always saw her own life from a distance, she always felt like she could see the stars up close. Pits of fire and fiery, hurtling towards an uncertain, melodramatic death. And they very much reminded her of people.

The weather was good tonight. Usually, nights were rattled by thunderstorms. Nights where the sky would shake, and the city would too.

But this was not the secret. The secret lay far beyond, hidden not amongst the ordinary but was burrowed into the edge of it. The Equatorial City was built, as per its name, at the Earth's equator. It was one of the three last cities standing after the nuclear war wiped out most of humanity. Each of the last three cities stood because they'd found something vital they could harness. A consequence of the war was that a nuclear winter had befallen the entire planet due to soot and smoke from the explosions and fires. Black clouds populated the once-azure sky, and (almost) everything died. Sometimes, humans did not think of consequences. This was a brilliant example.

This made the equator one of the last places in the world with sunlight – and a source of solar energy. So there came an influx of survivors from all over the world. A quintessential melting pot of anything and everything. Here, people were finally united by a common goal: to make it to the next day – hopefully, alive.

The potent storm clouds covering the rest of the Earth had really proven to be a good reason for everyone to cooperate here.

Tora trekked out to the edges of the city, and looked at the world far beyond it. Fields of solar panels panned out where the sky was clear, but a storm brewed near the horizon. Lightning and thunder rumbled in the distance, the thick remnant storm clouds from the nuclear winter still lingering. In the sky, the starscape did not wander past the thick blanket of cloud. Looking into the vast uninhabited beyond, one might feel a sense of sublime. Of fear, of wonder.

Tora was sightseeing in her own body. She struggled to feel anything at all. The sensation returned to her once again – she retracted back so far into herself that she merely saw the storm from a distance, but there was a disconnect between the emotion and the event. Her emotion died a long time ago, and its antithesis – logic – was the only thing left.