The Lazarus Effect

Chapter 1: Bonds of Fire

Chapter 1: Bonds of Fire

When I leave a place, it senses my absence. Nothing happens off-stage; that is why I write everything down.

My steps synchronized with Oti's. We were marching to roll call, our soles bounding hard off the frozen ground. We were too far from nulling the chill with the closeness, but our cold breath began to mix into one exhale.

The Pavers certainly were the luckiest of them all. Every snow print taken was from their carvings, the foundation for all of us foot-soldiers. In this exchange, they would own a larger piece of us than we ever would of them.

"Let me live just this one moon," Oti howled. "We used to birth stars, why run from them?"

"That wasn't us, Oti..."

Against the surge of howls and cries, worst of all, was his smirking laugh. The one where he took in all the air at once and let it out before he found a warm body to draw blood from. 

We traced the spine of a fault line toward the central square when he began to drift off to the right, fading behind the white wall of the blizzard. His figure dissolved into only an outline in the expanse of nowhere. All that was left of him was a bobbing head of flames. He was driving us both far from the edge, its daggers sharpening in its own winds, led by its own sail. The bird with the orange belly was back. Kachinas are spirits or personifications of things in the real world. The red cattle herd always moving West. We were always moving East. I am Perseus in the stone. I am tied to the chair, tied to the wall, like a two-headed shepherd dog.

I could hear his voice, though our ears did not share the same dimension. "Is it not my life to give?"

He heard me too because when I thought, "You know it isn't," I heard him laugh, grinning hard, a body against a mind.

"Save some for the wind," I advised.

"Maybe it'll carry you far enough that the ground will give you a purpose."

"Wherever you go, I go too."

Suddenly, I was fascinated by how quickly and thoroughly I could erase my footprints. "This is kind of a package deal." "Mhmm."

"There's always something else, somewhere else to be. Why not just be here with me?"

"You answer your own questions, you know that?"

We let silence take over.

"Is 23 coming back?"

The Caretaker's mind was filled with questions, each one a spark that could ignite. So, they kept him hidden inside until the sun fell and the red moon rose. His every move watched, as everyone except me waited for the imminent combustion.

I knew he didn't truly believe it. Still, he would stare hard and long at his fingertips when he was left alone.

He loved pushing me closer to the fire, watching with fascination as my body trembled from the heat. "You never know what you want; even your body can't make up its mind," he would say with a sly smile.

He believed that if you do something, you must mean it, and Oti was filled with meaning and doing. "Follow me," he would say, and I felt my cold bones brittle from the heat.

Everyone would tell me, "If you want to defend him, keep going..."

"It'll lead you right off the ​Platform."

Oti hadn't closed his eyes for two moons straight, but the wind opened them wide. 

Oti had a way of drawing me into his world. "I can almost touch it," he murmured, extending a trembling hand towards the veil. A shadow moved fast behind. Last Winter, I thought it was him. There was a tremor beneath my feet; it was far and few between, something in the beyond coming into the now as we pushed into the Challenger Deep.

A knowing smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "Good. It means you're ready."

I watch the time pass, and it watches me back.