Halo of Fire

Lucidly Awake

 Everything around me was a foggy black forest of silently screaming, anguished faces growing clearer and fuzzier at different times as though they were struggling to say something to me so I could help them. I was stabbed by sharp shards of unease, discomfort, despair and guilt as I took in the warped, constantly changing faces and realised there was nothing I could do to try to help them. A bone deep, blazing coldness gripped my soul and threatened to rip my heart out of my chest to carry it away. Reflexively, my hands pressed over my pounding heart. I managed to make sense of the gnarled, haggard trees bowed close to the marble-like earth that swirled sickeningly under my bare feet. The trees had knife-sharp, needle-thin branches bejewelled by large slivers of pale blue ice.

A painful feeling of unbearable yearning wrapped itself around my chipped, porcelain chest. Mum and dad were out there somewhere. They HAD to be. And yet, I was struggling to see anything past the shadows around me apart from the distant branches of distant trees that had formed thick, glittery cobwebs of black wood. The glitter was discoloured pupils stretched wide open as they blankly watched everything around them, their redness making it seem like they were painful because they had been open for far too long and had seen far too much. Where was I?

My numb feet picked that moment to dare slide forward over the frozen blackness beneath them. My own eyes refused to shut despite the sharp prongs of darkness that threatened to rip them out of their sockets. Cautiously edging forward meant forcing frozen fronds of darkness and silent shadows to pull away from one another with angry, almost soundless hisses. Something sharp kept stabbing at the bare soles of my feet, making me feel like I was walking on invisible shards of glass and I started anticipating something atrocious; what would I do here if, suddenly; everything changed and something startling enough to rip me in half happened? I had nowhere to hide! No way to try to prepare myself, and I had no real idea where I was or even where Lusciano was in case I needed him or he needed me. The longer my eyes stayed open, the more things I started noticing.

A congregation of shrouded people were huddled to one side. Their shrouds were thick, grey cocoons that obscured each and every aspect of who they could have been. Their hidden heads were bowed, almost like a forest of imprisoned mourners held together by some semblance of melancholia that united them with bonds stronger than those of blood or familiar relationships. They were huddled together around a gargantuan throne fashioned almost entirely out of naked, bloated bodies piled atop one another and pressed close together with their faces hidden as though they were in permanent states of prostration atop one another. Their skins were bloodless and bone white, making them look like alabaster smoothed into strikingly realistic human forms. Withered, thorny roses in dirty yellow-brown were twisted tightly around various parts of this throne with their once beautiful heads bowed in silent surrender.

I finally managed to look away from the throne and my gaze fell upon a figure close by. It was covered almost entirely from his-or her-feet to neck in a gently flowing but nonetheless strong-looking black material. I was very used to black but this shade of black made everything else pale in comparison; it redefined everything I had once known before about the colour black. The two feet were long and slender, ending in points suggesting that the inky black material was somewhat like a full body suit. It covered two shockingly long, lithe but delicately muscled legs and each and every part of a body that I was gobsmacked by mainly because it was a perfect combination of length, leanness and delicate-somehow perfect-musculature. Most of the body was shrouded by a huge pair of wings that were coal black and trailed to the ground. I could also make out what looked like an unruly mop of black hair and suddenly, I realised EXACTLY what I was looking at!

Bolts of potent hatred stabbed me and made my blood boil; if I reached out to touch him I would find myself faced with a banished president of Hell and would most probably drop dead as a consequence. Reaching out to try to touch him seemed as appealing as drinking my own vomit; something my stomach clenched at the thought. What would I...