Shattered Into Ash

Shattered Like Silver

Azun:

We will meet before dawn. Five hours. Guns drawn.

I hold a crystal ball in my hands as I sit on my bed. I have possessed this item for a long time, Vestry gave it to me for a birthday a few decades ago.

The time between Earth and Malison is so different. Earth moves around the sun in 365 days, the inhabitants age a year each time they take a trip around the sun. A year on Malison is 7,300 days. The time passes in slow motion whenever I see footage of earth. Days go by there when minutes past by here. It's confusing for the average mind. Luckily for me I am above average according to my grades. I can understand basically everything they threw at me.

I move my finger across the ball, trying to find Nathaniel. I have done this every night for since he was banished, taken away from me. I didn't even get to say goodbye. I have never found my brother. I have access to all of history in this little crystal ball, I have searched decades at a time, but I haven't found anything.

I focus my brain to connect with my brothers. I can hear all his thoughts, but I don't speak to him. I don't know why I don't, I don't want him to worry and I don't know if dad wiped his memory. I have been in my father's office once in my whole life, for my interview when I joined the army for him. He has a giant crystal ball full of memories from prisoners he sent to Earth. If I could get to that, I could see if Nathaniel is there, where he is. I continue to swipe across the ball, searching for my brother.

My telepathy is a side effect of my power. Earth has nothing to do with the mind, but Death does. Everyone is afraid of death and what is in the life to come. Even I don't know the answer to that. I have come up with theories, but I guess I will never know until I die.

My finger freezes on a boy and a girl. I zoom in with my thumb and pointer finger. I have found my brother. My jaw hangs open and I clench the crystal ball to my chest. At least I found him before my duel, I check my watch, I have four hours. I hold the crystal ball to my forehead, wishing the future of my brother and myself to pour into my head. I was not prepared for what I saw.

I threw the crystal ball across the room after the vision ended. I am breathing frantically, the glass pieces scattered around my bed.

The fire. That fire. I knew those flames all to well. I will never unsee what I just saw. Everything I had gathered together, everything I taught and shared and prepared just shattered into ash.

He is lost in that fire, destroyed in the fire that destroys me. I scramble to my desk, stepping in the glass that cuts my feet to ribbons, droplets of my own blood fall onto the floor, staining the wood. I don't care anymore, I know my future, I know Nathaniel's. My desk is covered with papers, books, tech, anything you can imagine just piled up from me not putting my crap away. I throw everything aside, glass things shatter onto my floor, papers fly out the open window, books hit the ground in a loud bang, I throw the chair across the room and kneel down to write a letter on my desk. The ink stains the paper, still wet after I fold it up and place it inside an envelope. I shove it into my pocket, then check my watch, three hours.

Inside one of my drawers is a letter my brother wrote me, I pull it out to read his ten year old writing. I pick up the picture frame beside my bed, the two of us on a trip to the zoo years ago. It was like a distant memory. He was so small, innocent, pure. The vision I saw of him, he was a different person.

Maybe I started this. I started the battle that will happen. The fighting, the bleeding and the dying, I was just reading my book when I should of been preparing my brother for the worst. He is a match, being burned, now he is almost to the end of the stick when Luke will place him on a wick that will burn, growing, moving further till the spark reaches the destination, the dynamite. I can't believe I watched that whole vision, I watched everything burn and I did nothing about it. I can't believe I was so blinded by the innocents of my brothers and I couldn't see the truth.

I hold the picture of Nathaniel against my chest as I sit in my bed, my feet aching from the glass buried in them. He is the thing I will lose in the fire, he is the spark that sets off the revolution, he is broken, shattered into ashes, he will never be the same again.

Nathaniel will soon face a tremendous climb, he will need to prove something, once I am gone he will have nothing to lose. I print off a ticket to The Colony Planets. Nathaniel won't have anything or anyone holding him back once I am gone. He can be who he is, where he belongs. Maybe if I let history take its time, Luke or Ames can show Nathaniel what is inside of him. He can have the confidence I took away from him, he will not hesitate to shoot or to fight, he won't cry under the table like I saw in his history. Best of all, he can take what he wants and do what he wants.

I saw my brother in that vision, I wasn't there and he was winning the game of chess between Mike and Luke, he raised the stakes to life and death and the vision ended before I could see what happened. Black, blue and yellow are good colors on my brother, the absents of skin showing, just blackness, the only brightness in his hair and in his eyes. Still shining bright like I remember him.

There must be a reason he is still alive on earth when he should have died a long time ago.... There must be a reason I am alive and still mentally functioning when everyone around me wants to me die. I check my watch, one hour. I grab my dueling gun from my closet, dusting off the thing, loading it with a single bullet. This is not my first duel.

All I can think of is the spark that will light this revolution by a duel. One spark to set the flame ablaze to lick the walls up like dry wood on a summer day. Tenderly the spark will turn to fragments all that I adore about that spark.