Death is immortality.
Death is your second chance.
Velian Terrashine belongs to a classless society of equality, art and democracy; a land full of creativity and mindfulness. It is in that perfect political system that one wrong movement, one carele...
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THE RAIN WAS HEAVIER that time of the night, falling over the Gap World to wash away the remnants of the blaze and the red smoke of the building's eruption. Without any incredulity, it was the first time I was grateful for its existence. For if it hadn't been for the rain, I didn't want to imagine the depth of the catastrophe that would have followed the eruption; the damaged houses, the deaths, the homeless. A disaster, one that even Denfer's magic couldn't have prevented.
Next to a painted dark green lighthouse, the sound of the rain kissing the ocean accompanied the silent cries of those who had lost their relatives, their friends, their lovers. Denfer had instructed them all earlier in the day to gather a bag with all their necessities and come to stay here. Away from that building, the city, the upcoming disaster that Denfer had known about and had tried to prevent. At least that was what Jersen had told me the few moments I'd stayed in the castle to catch my breath and ask him where Denfer had gone.
That buzzing sound of the explosion hadn't left my ears for a second, making my heart flounder every time the memory crept back in. I didn't know if it would ever disappear. In Lantra nothing like that would ever happen, that image of death would never haunt Josh or any other artist. They would fantasize and daydream about it, glorify it through their art. What they would always miss was the raw sound of heartache and the crippling sensation of shock that had followed the explosion. Because at that moment, I'd been sure that my own heart had exploded too, fulminating as the building had burst with fire and smoke.
But now the only thought swirling in my mind revolved around the people who had been left behind. The ones who had lost their people inside that building. I knew from my own experience that if something like that had happened to my parents, I would lose every hint of hope for a better future. Without the people I loved the most, the present and the future seemed like a waste of time, a lost battle.
Yet they had to survive. And that was the reason they had decided to come here, next to the ocean, to avoid being wrapped up in the flickering flames of the eruption. To save their lives, to avoid witnessing such a traumatizing view. Because even though they were dead---in my terms---they wanted to survive, to keep going, to keep on living. And that will alone was the greatest accomplishment.
Denfer was talking to them, his voice hoarse from all the shouting he had to do in order to have their attention and from the smoke he'd inhaled earlier. Everyone was standing around him. I could only hear his words of compassion and encouragement. The words of a leader but also the words of a man who had gone into that building himself and had gotten out alive.
"May the ocean wash away the flames that were wrapped around their bodies."
Silence.
No one dared to interrupt it but the sound of the waves hitting the shore with an abnormal cruelty, as if the waves also roared for everything that had happened tonight. A battle cry. A hymn to the dead. An ode to heartbreak. Not cathartic. Not therapeutic. But full of sorrow.
