The building is silent.
Empty rooms greet her as she makes her way through. Windows, whole and broken, draped with plastic sheets with ragged edges. Torn down the centre. Fallen to the ground.
Cracked tiles. Jagged shards of broken glass. Fractured concrete and crumbling plaster, ready to break at the slightest disturbance. Her breath brushes the wall, and dust falls, drifting from the ceiling, alighting in her hair.
She drifts from room to room, a ghost. Stairs creak beneath her weight as she goes up. Higher. Higher. The floor groans beneath her, but she keeps going.
A hand catches at her wrist. Stops her. Pulls her close. Brushes hair from her face. "She's been gone for two weeks, Kina. If she wanted to be found, we would have found her by now. She's not here."
She shrugs away from his touch and goes to the window, stares out over her broken city. She can feel him behind her, where he always is. Close. Warm. Comforting. He rests a hand on her shoulder. Wind blows through the gaping hole where glass used to be, carrying the dust from her hair away on a dancing wind. "She's out there, Joss. I can feel it," she whispers. Her whisper is carried away from her. She imagines Trenna can hear it, wherever she is. Staring out over her city, at the flames that surround them, the thought is not very comforting.
YOU ARE READING
Fanfare
FantasyAll her life the fire wall has been standing. Trenna has been enclosed, her whole city circled by flames. She always thought that her city was the world. But then everything changed. Pierce, a childhood friend, is not dead after all, and her mothe...
