Faithless
“It sounds like you don’t know what you believe.”
The Final Knight’s words rang out again in my mind. Here I am, a day later, a brain surgery in progress in front of me, and my mind is a million miles away...
*screams from the patient*
The Seasons turn and I’m part of Winter, but what does it mean? What has it done for me? The Pontifex, Sukra, had asked “How does it make you grow?” I watched everything I’d called home turned into slag, how does knowing the Seasons will change help me grow?
*another scream*
Does it just numb me, instead? Just give me something to cling to, words to mouth to myself? Is Faith *supposed* to help us grow? Sukra seemed to think so... and that Faith was about Power, too. I’ve seen those with power, she seemed to think that my place as a newspaperman held some. All I’ve felt recently is powerless, though. I write, I print, I write more, but it’s not going to affect much, y’know. They’re just my notes, my way to remember things that I share with others... I couldn’t really meet her eyes as we talked, it felt like her intense gaze bored itself into my mind, trying to pick through the things it found scattered there. I blink at the memory, and it causes a small, sharp intake of breath.
*long, extended, bloodcurdling scream*
...
... What in the hells am I actually watching?
I look away from the gory scene in front of me as another extraction occurs, thoughts in turmoil. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I squint through the ash that burns my eyes, gaze turned back, towards Crystal Creek. The caravan is bumpy and the day sweltering. Another town gone. Radioactive fires and ash lay waste to everything we’re headed away from. In a few days, storm clouds will move in and wash everything here with poisoned droplets, killing pretty much anything that might have survived. In a few seasons, the only thing here will be another irradiated pit, with a brew of radioactive storms making the path here treacherous. I don’t know that many will be willing to brave it to try and come back, but who knows. So many people having to flee, each one hoping, believing, in something different... and I can’t look away from the destruction. There’s nothing to believe in out here. The seasons will turn if I believe or not... and things happen out of season all the time. It doesn’t need me to believe in it, so... I think... if it’s all the same, thank you... I just... won’t anymore. The caravan keeps rattling its way along, but I’m still looking back at the wreckage, my mind finally quiet.
