Chapter Text
If I were dying on my knees, you would be the one to rescue me
And if you were drowned at sea, I'd give you my lungs, so you could breathe
I've got you, brother-er-er
- Brother (Kodaline)
August 8, 1783. Friday.
There's a cold breeze today. It's not quite winter yet, and still the world is freezing over. It's as if the Earth itself, in her hatred for the crimes of mankind against her, is rebelling, vowing to kill us all within her icy grip.
No one wanders the streets anymore. The roads outside the windows are silent and soft, the only movement of snow falling to lock us indoors and of the occasional rabbit, darting around, already in its winter coat. It's dark outside. It has been for the past two years. Sometimes, I wonder if God or Ra or Apollo or Allah or whatever deity that exists out there decided to pluck the sun from the sky and forgot to put it back. Why else would this have happened?
- - - - - - - - - -
I pick up a bowl, put it back down. Pick it up again. Put it down. It’s like my life, I think. Repetitive. Not good, not bad. Just… there.
I stand, go to the window. I don’t open it, but even inside I can feel the frost, coating the windows and the doors and the streets. Everything has become white, the trees, the animals, the sky. It’s like everything has been covered in bleach, leeching the world of its color.
I press a hand to the freezing glass, my fingers prickling as it eagerly sucks out as much heat as possible from my skin, and lean in, hiding half of my face behind my hand while the other half looks out the window. The world looks so small like this, with my fingers in the foreground, able to block out the entire neighborhood with just one hand. Pulling away leaves a clear imprint of my palm on the glass pane, which doesn’t fade as I stand there staring through it.
I need to go outside. I need to run, feel the wind, no matter how bitingly cold, feel alive in any measure possible.
I don’t.
I step back, return to my room — my room, as if anyone else still inhabits this house — and gaze around. It looks trapped in time, just like the rest of the world: my trigonometry homework papers still sit open and scattered across my desk, a pencil and eraser flung on top; my bed is messy, blankets draping over the side and reaching for the floor. A faded poster of my favorite boy band droops at the corner, held up by a thumbtack pinned through the top.
Across the hall, the master bedroom lives untouched even by light — bed perfectly made, with not a fleck of dust out of place.
The front door remains closed, locked, a firm barrier between here and there. A final attempt at protection, at pretending the world is the same, that there are still burglars and criminals that I must bar my door against.
The streets remain silent through the deep night.