I had my brother. My brother had me. The trust between us had become an unbreakable bond. We had each other's backs as we ascended to the heights of enlightenment. Our limbs reached out and pulled us forward consecutively, like gears of clockwork, until we were hoisted atop the peak. We did it, I mused with awed satisfaction. I knew we could. The precipice on which we stood acted as our wings, like those of Icarus—however, ours were of the righteous angels, not candle wax and doves' feathers. From here we had a God's eye view of the world below, so distant now it looked like no more than a faded patchwork quilt. Our pride was one and the same. Hurricane-force gales of wind struggled to send us earthward, but we were unstoppable. Untouchable. Some might say my arrogance would be my downfall. Our carefree laughter rang out over the rush of the cerulean sky—together, we had beaten the odds. So intoxicated was I on the high of invincibility, I failed to see what stood before me.
I was so blind.
I had my brother. My brother had me. When I tossed him a victorious grin, he simultaneously smirked back at me. Despite the lighthearted scene, his smile seemed too wide and his eyes smoldered with embers of dark fire. The sunlight's rich golden hue waned to a pale, mellow shade as it does during the bleak days of winter, and the breeze held an unexpected chill. The expression he wore wasn't one I was familiar with, and I instinctively recoiled. My heart stuttered as alarm lanced through me like lightning, and his look morphed into one of shock. In that moment of uncertainty my footing slipped, and the world seemed to tilt. I felt myself losing balance. Losing control. At the same time that I reached out, my brother took ahold of my arm. His gaze hardened with intense suspicion.
I was so weak.
I had my brother. My brother had me. We stood there precariously, looking each other dead in the eye when something occurred to me. I felt overcrowded. Claustrophobic. Thunderous storm clouds gathered overhead, roiling like smoke asphyxiating the once-serene atmosphere. My faith in him wavered dangerously. There wasn't enough space for the both of us here, especially now that he seemed to be exhibiting such disturbing personality shifts. It was as if his very presence could topple me over the edge into oblivion. The air crackled with a desiccating heat so life-sucking, I feared I might shrivel into a papery husk. Despite how much we'd been through together, he seemed willing to let it happen. I had trusted him. He was keeping me at arm's length, equal parts ready to throw me off and pull me back to safety. My stance mirrored his exactly.
I was my brother. He was me.
* * *
Then, the mountain they had taken such arduous lengths to scale was splintered. As he fell, the world cracked and shattered like a mirror until there was nothing left save an empty, flat redness that seemed to stretch on infinitely. From there, those moments in time would be reconstructed over and over, repeating like a broken record in an eternal loop, unseen by any but those closed eyes behind which they flashed. For him, time had frozen on a single pivotal moment, and apart from that distorted memory, all else had funneled away into an obscure void. On some lost subconscious level, a question flitted through what was once his mind. How could this have happened? How had everything become so—the thought trickled away like sand in an hourglass. Everything melted away, like molten wax slipping down the length of a candle. As the blurry lines hardened, indistinct shapes began to take on value and form—a world born anew, yet all too familiar.
He blinked open his eyes, and found himself staring into the determined face of his brother.
"You ready for this?" His brother gazed excitedly up at the vertical craggy wall that extended into the clouds. He shook his head to clear the remaining haze from his mind and breathed his ambiguous reply, "Yeah. Let's go."
