A ripple in time

I cannot explain the loathe I feel in trying to impart this part of the story of our people. The taste that it leaves in the back of my throat, on the tip of my tongue ... heinous..

I don't remember. I cant remember. I don't want to. It was like I was not there. I was but I wasn't. It is an all consuming horror etched so deep into my mind that it wiped itself away.

I remember riding with some of the children and how happy we seemed to be for such a short time. We were chasing a lizard or we were trying to catch up with it as it bolted across the ground in a panic to escape. We were trying to outrun it. But we didn't.

I remember the trickle of brilliant red that raced across a dry branch. How pretty it was. Sparkling, glinting gleaming with a hunger to propagate. Was I the one that created it? Was I trying to help put it out?

Much of what I know has been filled in for me .. told to me by others so that I have ... something ... to put into the blank. They have been cautious as to how much they share but I can feel the volume of what they do not say, burgeoning on the inside of them.

I remember turning to find one of the boys. He was lost somewhere in the boil of smoke that was approaching. Approaching too fast. I searched and searched straining to see through the delicate vapors and then I found him. He was dancing in the midst of those beautiful crimsons and ambers. The melody of roaring thunder moved his feet and his arms as if he were suspended from dainty little wires that the sky held to puppet him with. I heard his song fill the wind. It was a sound that filled my ears and wrenched the contents from my belly. I tried to run inside to bring him out but just as I reached out my hand ...

I inhaled him ..

the essence of him

and he vanished.

The sight, the scent, the smoke, the thickness of the air ... the darkness began to swallow me whole.

~*~ OOC : Thank you to all that kept the character part of the events.