This is a short story of a girl named Naia who one day wakes up with her mind empty of memories, almost buried within the ruins of a broken city on a lightning-lit night.
for my moa of a sister that is turning 19
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"Soobin?" Naia calls out, hoping that perhaps the boy merely slipped down the side but is here, despite being a little scratched up. "You okay?"
She steps towards the edge of the platform, dangerously close to the tilting edge, and to her dismay sees nothing but rock and fire. The heat of a patch of flames fans across her skin, forcing her to back away, blinking away the smoke that stings her eyes. She also comes to the conclusion that her new- old?- friend did not make it through the door.
"Damn," she mutters, turning back to face the city. Just like before, the sky is exploding with lightning, streaking across the sky in muted thunder. This time, however, the air is hot and dry, making the dirt caked on her skin flake. She rubs them off with her palms, feeling itchy, scanning the area for any sign of what her purpose here may be.
And she thinks she finds it, in the shape of another boy.
This time, he's sitting on the broken steps by the platform, staring into the endless destruction that has wreaked across their world. She believes he's been there this entire, but hasn't moved despite a door suddenly appearing and a girl along with it.
Odd.
Something about his back strikes as familiar. She thinks that maybe it's the same as earlier, that she knows him but not really, just like Soobin, but there seems to be something else about it. Like she's seen it before, but not too long ago. His hair is a stark flash of blond against the greys and reds of the burning city, and he seems to be frozen in his spot, dressed in a grey sweater. His shoulders are slightly broader than Soobin's and there's a hole around one of them, part of the design, and just the sight of his pale shoulder sparks another flash of recognition in Naia's head. That's all it takes for her to approach him.
"Hello?" She calls out, a little louder as to be heard over the crackling embers and thundering clouds. "Are you okay?"
After repeating what she'd said to Soobin, the boy turns, instantly whirling on her, clearly surprised. His palms scratch against the ground, and Naia feels her breathing seize, due to two things.
The first is the sight of the horns growing from his head, dark and curved, like a cross between elephant trunks and deer antlers.
The other being that this face has already been permanently scored into the tissues of her brain, but the photo in her brain has the body attached to it distorted, covered in ashes and tears and blood.
"You're...."
"Dead?" He asks, voice quiet. Naia's heart hesitates in its beating, fear rippling through her. The boy looks surprisingly calm as he says it, but he turns anyway, facial muscles relaxed and expressionless, as if he has already gone through the five stages of grief.
"But, you're not?" Naia finds herself moving to sit next to the boy. His lips are startlingly pink and plump; his cheeks rosy. It's a stark contrast to the pale corpse she'd seen earlier, that was dressed in torn and dirty clothes. He's completely clean, and dry, and very, very much alive.
