Fate Undone: A Novella

Chapter VI

VI.

The sky was a bright blue ocean, cloudless and clean. There was nothing but the never-ending expanse of it.

It was as silent as the breeze could let it be, and completely empty. Anna found peace in this, staring into it. She felt the hard ground beneath her thick head of hair and against her back; she felt the grass in her hands and against her bare feet; she felt the absolute stillness of the world. And there was peace in all of that, too.

This is when it happened. This is when I heard the horns from the west. This is the last bit of quiet before it all fell apart.

Then something unexpected happened: a snowflake drifted by. It swooped in on a breeze of warm air, twirled in a circle, and drifted closer, but it blew away before getting too near. A second flake followed, repeating a similar pattern until a light gust sent dozens flying into view. They speckled the sky like aimlessly drifting stars, not knowing where to go and not understanding exactly how to do it. Yet, despite that, they still drifted and floated, blew and twirled, and tumbled and danced.

This is impossible, Anna told herself as she watched the snow play in the sky. This is a dream and nothing more. I've drifted off and forgotten how to wake up.

Then fall, her other voice told her. Die. Do whatever you normally do right before a dream ends. Do anything to just wake up!

One of the snowflakes fell and landed on Anna's eyelashes. She rolled over, sat on her knees, and pinched it off. She blinked several times and rubbed the flake in between her fingers. It was warm, not cold. And it did not melt, but broke, smearing the end of her finger with a grey chalk.

Anna looked up. The remains of a house lay before her, burnt down to blackened planks and an ashy foundation. Peaking up from behind it was the collapsed frame of her father's small stable, and to the left was a scorched oak tree. Home, she realized.

Off to the right was a whole row of ruins, made up of smoking mounds where her neighbors had once lived. To the backs of it all, jabbing at the blue sky like the crooked spine of a slain giant, was the city's shattered southern wall. Anna stood and turned. Beneath her feet was a patch of green grass, but elsewhere there was only black earth, white ash, and the marks left by fire and chaos that had come and gone. Every building had been toppled, creating caves and mazes of rubble in each direction. Here and there, half-buried in the rotten dirt, were the charred skeletons of men, women, and children. Some embraced each other even in death, while others clutched chipped blades and tattered banners.

Amongst it all, Anna was the only one left. She was alone in a world that had died without her.

Just wake up, she told herself. Just wake up. Fall. Die. Just wake up.

A heavier breeze stirred, pushing the ash into her face. It speckled her hand-me-down tunic and leggings, and it streaked her skin, giving her pallid stripes. The smell of burnt meat came in on that wind. It smelled of death and destruction and of a nightmare that wouldn't end. It smelled like the open air of the eastern field where she watched her father die, of the burning city as she ran through alleyways with her brother and sister, of the dark tunnel where the screams chased her, and of the fear suffocating the crypt.

"Just wake up," Anna told herself. "Just wake up."

The wind chimed in, blowing louder yet, until it moaned and wailed, kicking up dirt, dust, and a hail of unwanted ash that burned Anna's eyes and fell in between her teeth like putrid grit. Voices began to talk, shout, and scream. They said things Anna had heard before. They were voices speaking of promises and fears; voices yelling for help and pleading for safety. They sounded like they were stuck inside a stone tunnel, or being thrown out in the open air over the ring of swords and the roar of flames.

Anna fell to her knees with tightly closed eyes and hands cupped over her ears. She yelled back, "Just wake up!" as the wind and ash beat and pushed her down even more. She could feel the heat coming up from her lungs and burning the air around her. The ash clung to her until she was white, though it peeled away in strands of flames. The wind became a torrential gale, roaring like the beasts that helped bring Pasithia to the ground.

As Anna screamed, and the wind screamed back, she wanted nothing more than to be back home—home before it had all been taken away.

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