( WARNING )

It hurts.

It's a pain you've felt since you were born, numb and dull and aching; it's only newly felt and sears through your mind like branching fire. It's a pain that exists in all times and none; it exists now and never.

You've long since been unable to differentiate any of it.

Wait.

( There was a time, you think, when it didn't hurt. )

The earth is cracked and grey, dead or dying around you, but you have no care for the rocks littering the barren wasteland in which you land. They crack and shatter beneath your weight, hollow, brittle remnants of a once-proud world now wracked by fallout from war ( Read more... )

Come with me.

You know I cannot.

But it is your desire, is it not?

I cannot leave him.

Can you leave me?

Do not ask that of me.

( 'Answer' )