The Long Way Home

I'm lost.

Where am I, and where is my family? There was fire in the sky. Sirens, screams, as if the world was ending. And then I found myself here. This empty wasteland.

I am alive. I know this, for I am thirsty, my throat as dry as the wastes around me. I am alive, for I am hungry, my stomach echoing the words of hunger. I am alive, yet there is no life around me. None but the crow before me.

"Follow," it says.

And so I follow. Across the waste, I follow up the hill. I follow the wind, which has turned bitter. There clouds, but there is no sun, and I cannot see the sky. I feel cold, but in body only – it as if no soul is within me to feel fear's chill.

But I am alive. And joy fills me as I crest the hill. I see my family waiting for me.

"Go," says the raven. "Enter."

I rush down. Family, friends, they are all there. By an oasis. We laugh, we cry, we embrace.

"Drink," they say.

And so I do, the lagoon's substance entering me. More and more, all cool and refreshing.

Yet fire is within me. Fire is without. In the sky, as figures of myth do battle. In the sky. And on the ground, as monsters roam. As one comes to me. Hellfire in its eyes. I look to those close to me, as if a newborn, seeking to know the nature of the world.

"Drink," they say, and so I do. As I drink, and fall, and dream.

It is no lake, I think, but a well. I struggle. I scream, but I have no voice. I try to close my eyes, but have none. All that is left is the water, my soul becoming as one with its flow. And so come the words of the raven.

"Welcome home."