The Broken Crystal

Chapter Ten

When the sun had finally set, leaving the camp in darkness, Crystal and the others gathered around the camp fire. It was crackling loudly, flames rising high and filling their senses with smoke and orange.

Dean sat beside Crystal, but instead of being his usual chatty self, he was silent. His lips, the only doors into his mind, remained sealed shut. And no matter how much Crystal wanted to get her hands on the key, it was nowhere to be found.

After a while of staring where Dean himself remained oblivious, she knew every detail of how his eyes reflected the incandescent fire. Or maybe they didn't reflect it. There was a big chance that after everything he'd seen, everything he'd been through, they were burning all on their own.

Crystal's lips parted just to fall shut again, as they had already done many times that night. She turned away from Dean, partly because the smoke was scorching her lungs, but mostly because it hurt to see him like that. Leaning her head backwards, she closed her eyes. The sound of conversation and laughter was everywhere. But, even though she acknowledged it, she wasn't quite able to hear it. She wondered if it was the crackling of the fire, or her own thoughts that were being so loud.

Burn...

What was that?

Burn...

Angel?

Burn...

She herself?

Burn...

The word broke the armour of her thoughts, shattering her mind into pieces.

Burn...

She opened her eyes, expecting the voices to disappear. They didn't. Far from it; they got louder. For a moment she didn't move, staring at the oblivion ahead of her. She realized all the previous noises had died out. Straightening her back, she looked around. The campers were all staring at the fire. Every few seconds their lips would move, letting out a single word.

Burn...

It sounded like so many things. A scream. A whisper. A promise. A threat.

Burn.

A song.

Through bars, through lands, through hearts, through lives.

We walk like ghosts, just ghosts with eyes.

And we may fall down.

Death's deepest desire.

But burn, burn.

Our endless fire.

The voices blended into melodies, their singing becoming increasingly loud as they continued.

Crystallic souls, crystallic minds, crystallic hearts, crystallic eyes.

Too weak to last, too strong to faint.

They won't fall down.

Death's deepest desire.

So burn, burn.

Their endless fire.

The voices fell quiet, their words slowly withering, blending with the flames, burning, burning until a time equivalent to eternity had passed and Crystal's eyelids became too weary of waiting and her neck couldn't handle the weight of her head and her mind turned off, so easily, so unbelievably easily, as if it was nothing more than a simple switch.