Dancing With A God

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

1st of May 1977

That voice. That voice who had haunted her for so many years. That voice who kept echoing loudly in her sour mind. That voice who was always there. Screaming those words that could transform a dream to a nightmare. These words learnt from the mouth of a god or from a foreign scroll unheard by the other. Those words so strong it could destroy a town and a heart.

She fell on her knees, on the outcast of the forest, her hands shaking as she crumbled her pants with her fist. Her breathing was loud, heavy, as she listened through the endless screams of suffering. She wished she could forget, she wished the sounds could be obliviated from her mind with her sobs. She yelled in her heart, she cried in her head.

And all she thought was a life was only a life. The one she had believed to love once, the one she had believed to treat as her own, was only an illusion. Her Aaron, her boy, her son, had never been hers. The grief and the bitterness she had sawn in the eyes of the child she had known, she had trust that it had disappeared with the years. But her little boy had never forgave the drunks that set fire to his home and killed his sweet mother. And he had been ready for vengeance since his youth.

"Purification of the air ; the final sun."

And it was when she heard the finale phrase, when she saw her smaller self being pulled away from the danger,, that she stood up and ran away from the horror of what she saw for a second time. The dead. The screams. She couldn't live through it again. She couldn't stand it. And so she ran, tears falling freely on her cheeks, her auburn hair flying behind her.

She ran, she ran so fast her feet got mixed, her lips twitching. She ran through the forest she always went before, she ran and stumbled across the thick roots visible through the moonlight. She ran so fast and she could always hear the dreadful silence of a dire night. She ran so far she could see the sleeping orphanage. But as she ran, as she fled away from the horror and the misery, she fell off a cliff. The wind was gushing, the tears were stopping, the last scream was heard.

And when she reached the hard and hot ground, when her fall ended by a thump and a gasp, the life and the soul of the teen flew away from the body. No more tears were shed, no more pain was beard.

Quinn Wellbone died,

on that night of May,

none heard her screams of despair,

and her suffering was finally put to an end.

***

An old man with many wrinkles on his face was slowly rising with the early morning. He yawned, one then twice before standing up, helping himself with a nearby wall. He got his cane with slow steps and went to his kitchen, enjoying the sunbeam on his sour skin with a faint smile on his cracked lips.

And when he sat on his chair with a journal and a tea in hand, his heart skipped a beat as long time forgotten memories came back into his mind. As if something made them come back. He brought a shaking hand to his sour mind as his youth from years ago kept coming back. He suddenly recalled with a scoff how he found in a small cottage in the snow foreign scrolls that taught him unheard spells, how he had mastered them and how he had got his vengeance.

How many innocent lives have I taken back then ? He wondered, his eyes crying out tears that had been kept for too long and a hand covering his mouth. How many children became orphans because of my actions ?

He could remember how bitter he was after the death of his mother, how sour his mind was when he lived with Missy and how lonely he had been after she left. He believed what he had done was only justice but all he did was give away his misery and his hate. And he could still hear them the screams. Always the screams. Even when he thought he was always, he was always followed by those screams. When he felt full in his heart, he was only empty with grief and unknown tears.

The old man, in the early morning, cried at the realisation. And every time a tear would fall, his wrinkled hands would grasp tighter to his chest.

He took his cane and went out, his weak legs shaking from the shock of the memories. He passed his blooming garden, pushing away the wild meowing calico cat and he went out on a path. He walked, whimpering from the pain with no sound coming out and he dug his nails into his hands. The beating of his heart calmed down when the singing of the invisible birds started and he stopped, grunting from the pain in his back. He wondered, anger rising inside him, how he could have forgotten his past. He knew too well that it was past the date to be forgiven. Too much harm had been made from his head and he knew that he had broken too many hearts.

But as he was deep in his thoughts, reaching the cliff who offered shadow to his sour mind, he saw a thing that shouldn't have been there. A dark form, as if a human fell. And when he went closer, he thought he was still in his bed, sleeping. Only, as she rubbed his red, grey eyes, and when he blinked, the woman was still there, almost dead.

He knelt and took her pulse.

Slow, almost faint.

He moved away the hair from the cold face of the girl.

And he gasped in horror when he saw the face of the woman.

The same pale skin,

the same thin lips,

and the same auburn hair.

And he knew who she was.

He understood.

The old man took the soft hand in his calloused one, he stroked the hair with the other and he smiled. A genuine desire smile. One should wasn't faked by years of experience. And a warm feeling crept in his cold heart.

His mother has returned to him.