Intermundia

I always imagined death as something quiet, gentle, even. So I waited for it like an old friend. From the moment our minds learned to question the world, we were told our planet was dying. Virelia's time was slipping away, and except for the rich and powerful, most of us had already made peace with it. You stop clinging to hope when you watch the very breath of life seep out of your world, year after year.

It's a terrible thing to witness... and yet, there's a strange serenity in it. Like finally releasing something you've been gripping far too tightly, something long dead, though your fingers refused to let go.

Here, tomorrow is nothing but a lie, and the sky hangs low with the weight of ash, death, and silence.

And yet, above it all, another world thrives. ours plunged into darkness, theirs shimmering with light as it drains mine every month.

Fate is cruel like that.

I never thought something as fleeting as hope and strength, a pathetic hope for survival, could take root in me again, not after I had surrendered to the inevitability of my own end. But the feeling came anyway. Strong. Wrong. And yet, unbearably right.

I had to live so she wouldn't die.

But perhaps... death would have been as peaceful as I imagined, had I ignored the destiny fate had chosen for me.