Halfway across the city, at the mercy of two tonnes of earth and stone, a lone woman kneels beside a frayed oak trunk, stained letters strewn in disarray across its mangled surface. She is milky-skinned and black-haired; her large, almond-shaped eyes skim over the words on the papers as if they are not even there.
Three at once. Her little brother had never sent more than one letter at once. Not since he began sending them instead of coming home. At this point in the war, he was denied even that one mundane right. Caelum no longer practised their special art of thinly-veiled distaste, and have since converted to flagrant extremism. A welcome change, really, albeit an unfortunate one.
[Dear Eva...]
[...still cannot find him]
[Nothing you could do]
[So sorry]
[...I have been feeling troubled as of late]
[I wish...]
[I hope...]
[I wonder?]
[Jules is fine]
[Milo as well]
[How are you?]
[...remedies for Mother]
[I am fine.]
[All my love, your brother Damien]
She tucks a lock of raven hair behind her ear, her brother's words swimming and blurring, letters unhitching from one another and distorting into a great mass of meaningless shapes and symbols.
Foolish, stupid child. However did he summon the shame to write? Her fingers drum the side of the oak trunk incessantly, feverishly, until even her breathing has become inaudible and the groaning of two tonnes of the Earth above her head is silent and the wretched pounding at the door becomes a dull nothing, or perhaps whoever it was has simply been forced to stop.
Any day now.
Her fingers search the oak trunk, seeking paper, not intending to write one word.
People have, for her whole life, branded Evangeline Winter as an artist. The paper canvas lies expectantly before her, patiently awaiting its fate. She ponders its blankness, thinking how simple and undemanding and immaculate it could be, and then she pulls the tip of her pen straight through its perfect nothingness, watching with some measure of amusement as a dark watery trail of ink bleeds in its wake.
Lines are drawn; divisions are clear. Walls are built and fences are erected.It is much too risky to straddle these barriers. One side or another.
Choose now or they will make you disappear.
Sirens, screaming, the hissing of flames. All these are but stifled background noises. Crying and choking and burning and dying. Cry and cry and cry, Eva thinks; You might well cry yourself to a better place. She resists the sudden overwhelming urge to stuff the door cracks with paste and seal herself away in this unlit, soulless alcove until she finally drives herself mad and dies.
Why she has not been found yet is beyond her. But for four years she has survived here, and perhaps her brother had truly known something; perhaps that is why she is here and why she is not dead and why the Caelum have not yet ground her skull to a fine dust. Perhaps Damien knew. Perhaps he hadn't. They will look for you, but they will not find you. Trust me. How could she trust a brother who had spent his whole life putting himself in the crosshairs of death?
YOU ARE READING
Morality
FantasyEnter Damien Winter, ostracized by his world and by his community. When he meets Michael Florian-beloved, admired, and idealized-their bond will incite the downfall of a society that has held strong for millennia, and the irrevocable chaos, resistan...
