_{Story by [Linderel].}

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I wander the halls of my home, feeling inexplicably lost. The earthquake has shattered many of the inner walls, and papers, decorations, splinters of wood are littering the floors everywhere I turn. Time has been lost to me - I cannot remember how many days it has been. It feels like such a long time. It could be centuries, and it wouldn't surprise me.

Mistress hasn't shown herself. Not since the storm that preceded the quake; not since venomous words had been spat into the air between us, stinging eyes and mouths alike.

Words. Our words.

It's what had begun the row, spurred us into an intense verbal war against each other, a showdown for an invisible audience. I am her servant, yet she is my nemesis. That is how it has always been. Being told it is all to come to an end is not what a creature as proud as I wants from a nemesis, even one who is my Mistress.

Our world is ending, and by now, it is, yes, ours, because there is no one else left to claim it. She said it is brought on by spells, by words that never should have been uttered; she spoke of the evil that coils inside the ribcage of every being and how it had been unleashed where it shouldn't, when it shouldn't.

It is the apocalypse that is knocking on our door, without Harmageddon, Ragnarök, whatever you wish to call it. There will be no battle, only a silence and a dark that, once it descends, cannot be breached.

It is already quiet. Maybe this is how poets die - when the last word is spoken, and there are no more words to utter, no syllables to join, no sounds to form.

I can feel the cold settling in when I finally find her. Mistress, I tell her, these are our last moments.

How may I be of service?

Shed the servant's cloak, she pleads. So that for these few meager hours, we would be equals. Come, she says, together, let us keep warm.

It is silent, but for the heartbeat softly drumming against my ear. My words have already vanished, swept away by the currents of time soon to be forgotten. When night descends, we worship each other, and her last whispers are of secret promises and a wild hope that makes my body pulse, shine.

When darkness falls, we are one, and no words are needed.

This is how poets die.



Comic illustration by [Triola].

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/ Passages
/ [Linderel]