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Dated the night of November 28th
It was snowing again. Each time it snowed, he thought of the rain. Each time he thought of the rain, he thought of the fire. He remembered the scarred man, a stranger, a lover, a brother, and knew something was coming to a head. So Ahren walked, following that faint ringing, following the scent of death and dandelions. Snow collected on his fur, turning it damp, darkening it, but he felt nothing. He had gotten his wish. He didn’t feel anything anymore.
That cottage broke his line of vision. Ahren stopped, and stood still for a long time, simply looking at it. He inhaled, waited until the cold air in his lungs turned warm, and breathed out. Two steps. Something in the forest muffled, and dampened the sound of the bells. Another two steps. One hand reached out and touched the door, felt white-hot fire, and he knew something was about to break.
Ahren pushed open the door and walked into the building.
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In the fireplace, the wood burned. He imagined that there were little embers dancing quietly in the hearth, but they were only there in his imagination. In reality, he was not facing the fireplace at all. From where he lay, lying on his side with arms and legs sprawled out over the carpet of the living room (it seemed too strange to call it a den), he faced the far wall and saw nothing. He also imagined that there was a clock ticking, even though he wasn't sure he'd ever seen or heard a working one, and even though he couldn't remember if the house he inhabited even had one anymore, broken or otherwise. It was the best explanation for the uneasiness of the silence, which didn't really feel like silence at all. He was sure there was something making noise that he couldn't quite place -- and so he imagined the clock because it was easier than telling himself that he was crazy. (He already knew that anyway.) Crazy men didn't like to admit that they were crazy after all.
The fire warmed his back, but his skull was cold. His hands were cold, and his feet were cold. His bones were cold, and they ached dully, like perhaps there were a thousand little termites gnawing away at them. He could imagine that too, with his eyes closed. Perhaps they were in the house too, the real one, the metaphoric one. Laruku didn't move or flinch or react when the door opened. He lay there, thinking nothing, wishing nothing, hoping nothing. The cold air from the outside seemed to completely negate the slight warmth of the fire. It was slowly dying anyway. He had more wood to toss on, but he didn't want to move. Ahren, his voice said, faded, like a tape recording that's been copied over too many times, Why is the fog white?
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The firelight came out to reach him, casting wide shadows and breaking the subtle blue-gray of the outside world. Ahren saw his shadow in twain, and saw the way the darkness did not reach his companion. In Laruku’s world now there was nothing but white. There was nothing but fog. It hurt him to see the hybrid like this, hurt him in the same way it hurt to think of Matinee, or Kaena, or the look on his son’s face the day he had left.
His ears folded back and he looked down. A gust of wind sent dying fireflies up through the would-be chimney, away from this strange little circus and out into the real world. In here, they were alone. In here, they were invincible. It was crazy to believe this, but perhaps they had, once upon a time. Before the war. Before the fire. Before they both gave up.
“It’s always been that way,” he said, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind him. A few steps took him to the fire, where he tossed in two logs casually. For a long time, he stared into that living entity, into the flame, and then spoke in a quiet near-whisper.
“I shouldn’t have saved you.”
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He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen fireflies, but he could remember the last time he'd mentioned them. He thought of neither though; he couldn't see the embers, and thus couldn't be reminded of them. (It's always better that way, isn't it?) Fog was white like the snow had always been, but it didn't feel that way. Both had had other things to give it variation, to give it life, somehow -- trees in the distance and leaves under the layers of ice and slush. This was a most unnatural fog, except that that was a contradiction. He didn't want to think that it had always been that way, that it had always been there, but he wasn't really sure what he was getting at anymore, if anything. Halfway through the answer, he'd forgotten his question. (Or decided that it didn't matter, more likely.)
His lips twitched around the edges like he wanted to smile -- once, twice, three twitches to make it seem as if his face wanted to react on his own, or perhaps he really did want to smile and simultaneously didn't (well, which is it, darling?). You shouldn't have, he agreed in the same voice as before, and the edges of his lips had settled on some half curve that might have looked sinister in the shadows. Why did you? He was sure he'd asked before, but either he hadn't gotten an answer, or it hadn't been satisfactory, or he couldn't remember. Or a combination of. I didn't want to be saved. It was a hopeless cause regardless. Somehow, he felt that he would have survived anyhow.
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In Ahren’s world, the fireflies were not the same. They were born out of smoke and ash, through the mouth of a dragon whose teeth were so deep in his neck he kept bleeding. He had bled out all the red and now it had turned black, and slowly, that was taking him over. His hair bore that proof all ready. The dragon’s fireflies danced from flame, where all of his being seemed to come from. That was where he had come from. Flame.
Laruku came from fog, from the white world that he had lived in for so long. That was all he had left now. Ahren kept looking into the fire, his eyes dead. He didn’t want to turn back. They couldn’t turn back now. “I don’t know,” he said lowly, knowing it was an excuse, knowing he had no reason. “I’ll fix it,” he continued, knowing that despite everything else he had ever believed, anything he had ever wanted, this was not supposed to be.
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Some broken things could be fixed, but most things would never be the same again. A machine could be fixed, perhaps, but a flower snapped in half had no remedy. A broken vase was a thousand shards of useless porcelain. Such was the nature of all those intangible things that made them who they were -- their metaphorical hearts, their souls, their spirits. It was funny, somehow, that such invisible things could be broken at all, but of course irony would make them the most fragile of things, and once broken, they would never be the same again. Time helped some, but others let time rot away at them even more. Laruku had always let things worsen over time; he never tried hard enough, that was all. He had always been self-destructive.
He inhaled and forgot what he'd been thinking. How can you fix it? The thousand useless shards of the broken vase had only one destination: the trash, the incinerator. There, each little piece would be broken into a thousand more pieces and a thousand more, until all that was left was dust for the wind. Wasn't it ever grounded creature's wish to fly? Dust could fly. Dust could travel the whole world. Laruku had never been a wanderer, but that was all right. Dandelion seeds flew too, when the time came.
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His family was broken. His left eye was broken. His mind had been broken for years, but that was all right. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done. Both of his hands remained lose, and to his own surprise, still. He should have been shaking. He should have felt something. “I came here to kill you,” he said in that same low voice, still unwilling to look away from the fire.
“You gave me my wish,” he added, hair falling into his face and obscuring his sight. “You should get yours.”
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Death being offered so easily felt like cheating, naturally. Perhaps that was why he had never taken Gabriel up on his offer before (since when did you care so much about cheating? Or pride?). Deep down of course, he was still terrified of it -- it was hard not to be. Part of him was still afraid that the truth was only that life went on in death and that it was no real escape. Part of him was still afraid of meeting in death everyone he had ever disappointed or hurt. He did not want to face his mother. He did not want to face Ceres. He did not want to face any of his once-friends that surely were dead by now. He only wanted a black solitude and an infinite emptiness. Just as he didn't trust in himself and he didn't believe in the world anymore, he didn't quite believe in death. Nothing was ever that simple. Of course, that was probably just another excuse and drawn-out self-justification for his own cowardice. Maybe it really was that simple.
The chance was still there, that death was everything that it was supposed to be: an end, a finality, a conclusion. The back cover of an awful story that had gone on for too long. There was that chance. He wanted to believe in that. He wanted to believe in Ahren, too.
What was your wish? he asked. His mind felt heavy and empty at the same time. He felt like there was too much he knew about the other and not enough simultaneously. They had never sat down and shared their life stories; they had never conversed like friends should have conversed. They had only ever talked about the apocalypse and things that were better off not talked about. Thinking back, it seemed like that was all he had ever talked about, with anyone. Stupid things.
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Everyone was afraid to die. Even Ahren, whom had come very close many a time, feared death. He didn’t know if there would be dreams, but if so, he was ready for that. Dream-Ahren, who had red hair, was always there. They spoke about a lot of things, and he reassured him. Even that final, merciful darkness would be better then living with that weight on his back (the ape, grinning, digging in its nails) and knowing that nothing was ever going to change.
“Not to feel anything,” he said quietly, and finally looked back to Laruku. He felt pain, but it was diminished. He felt regret, but it was a whisper. He felt what could have been love and known there was nothing for him. He looked down at his feet, realized he could no longer feel the pull of the earth, and shut his eyes.
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He smiled for some reason, though it felt fake and probably was. There was an emptiness in all of their words and all of their expressions, like an empty house full of nothing but skeletons and dust and echos, like the thoughts had emotion had long since died and there was nothing left but a shell. He supposed that he didn't feel much of anything anymore either, though he didn't remember if he had ever explicitly wished for that. Not to feel, not to breathe, not to be anything.
Okay, he said, and he could think of nothing else. What else did he have to say? It was the real apocalypse now, the real end, and it was quiet and hidden in the thick of the woods. It was not spectacular and it was not exciting. It wasn't anything. It was a muted thing, like the continued morning snow after a night of heavy snowfall. It was an afterthought. This is what his death would be. It would be nothing at all. It would be forgettable, like he wanted to be.
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