Memento vitae || Jongsang

1| Zeal

ㅡThings have burned out, and a whirling wind is pushing heaps of ashes down from the hill as it spreads them around until they are caught in the wind. Slowly, the tall stacks are disappearing, and the sooty remains of burnt grass are the only evidence of committed murder to have taken place here. Through the moving clouds, the light of the filled moon casts shadows along the stretch of the hill, and a trained eye would have been able to see the movement far away in the distance.

When things have ended, we tend to ask ourselves questions- questions that root way deeper than we ever seem to understand. We seek far down under the churning surfaces as our minds tie knots on themselves against laws of impossibilities. They push against life, forcing it to bow down at our feet before we do it ourselves when nevertheless, we all will die in the end sometime. The answers we search for are foul, why no one will ever seem to accept the truthstance of its actuality; why some take it for granted and leave the rest for the honour of imaginations. And yet, we never wish for it to happen, despite how given it always will be to humankind.

But, sometimes, miracles do happen..

It is a hand that breaks through the crackling layers of soot, pale and burnt. It claws deep grooves in the heavy masses of ashes as deep cracks break around it, pulling a following arm to the surface before strength shoves the ash further away. A body is digging itself up, grasping the short thread's end that life has yet to give. The moonlight casts its beams down upon the figure and reveals a man's outline, desperately coughing the grey sticky substance out of his mouth. Across his lips, a word repeats itself as though a beseech of prayers that he wants to be heard.

Eyes are screaming in silence, glowing a wounded red as the body raises itself around on its knees, hands sinking down under the ashes again. But there is only blurriness in every corner of what he sees and so many chasing demons.

And it has the hands start digging; fingers threading through the masses beneath him as his desperation pushes through his thoughts. Dust is spreading with the wind, swirling around his crouching form while he moves the masses around in the search of his lost soul, but he does not seem to mind even the heated sparks burning holes into his flesh. It takes a passing moment before the sharp gasp crosses the rough surface of his cracked lips at the realisation of touching something sturdy. A sensation that has an acute feeling pressing at his most brittle mettle. Soon he cries.

His fingers follow the outline of the skin suitly like the beautiful sparkling teardrops rolling down his cheek nigh. When sliding further down, it warms with both soothing heed and an immensing flare. The man's heart is melting, its shape liquidated in the burning heat, and he shivers at how he slowly loses everything it has given him, but also at how he is welcomed another world. Dreadful, his arms trail further down in the ashes until he forces a grip around an arm's width and throws his full weight backward while pulling with everything he can muster. Sensing wounds and sore muscles move with the act, a scratchy wail flees his tight throat and he strains his eyelids close under the sudden overwhelming feeling of giving up. His thoughts collide with each other - everything becomes a malfunctioning mechanism, but his hands are still grasping around the body and so pulling another man from the meagre remnants of death. The light from the moon shoots him in the eyes when he feels them tumble out of the extensive ashes. He wants to move his arms down along the back of the body when he discerns the cutting end of iron, making him freeze in every motion. Anxious and rather scared, the man knows very well what obstacle is preventing him from coming any closer without pain moving along with a sword through his own corse. He whimpers.

The boy bites his lip harshly, teeth pinning down the flesh while he tries to stay present as his hazy eyes trail downward. Listening to his breath stalling in the wind, his mind swirls with things that should have scared him more than anything else. And he cannot believe the sight of the sword being buried grip-deep into his open chest where at least four of his ribs stick out between burnt, sooted skin. Never has he seen a sight immensely disturbing as this, and he gulps hassled when the wind forces the smell in through his nose. Finding himself in the middle of a lake, he does not notice how his trembling hands pull troublesome at the sword until he is sure about his lip being bitten off. But instead, his wiggling efforts have the iron falling down between their bodies and the man's arms fall slack down against the ground, cheek pressing further down into the ashes in the grass. His heart is wrenching in his chest, overflowing the hard lines of his ribs as it seeks the touch of another hand around his shaking form. But he receives nothing - he dwells utterly alone under the full moon, an empty corpse of a man that he once had loved laying with an arm's distance in front of him as memories flood their walls, exhausted and lost.