Raftel: Redux
/There
are some things that can be taken away and never given back
Here comes the sky raining fire, the sea singing the end, the wind waving goodbye...
Why Raftel: Redux?
Kanthia loves Raftel, but she wrote it a year ago. Which is a long time. And she's gotten a little better since then, so she decided to re-do Raftel. Similar storyline, more awesome and hopefully longer. Thanks a million if you did read Raftel because you guys are awesome, and if you haven't than thanks for picking it up now.
Let's lose everything again, shall we?
-Revelation-
He is crying as he opens his eyes and consciousness enters his head.
He is on his back, and the sky is a shade of calming pink and blue overhead. The air smells of peppermint, the sea lifting at his feet is clear and blue and forever. The nightmare black sand tickles the spaces in between his toes; he sings a little bit of a song he doesn't know to it. The cool air, dry and brackish, joins him as it passes over his parched lips. He is thirsty. He is hungry.
He is alive, but something else is missing.
He can taste something salty and horrible in his mouth. He runs a finger along the wetness covering his stomach and tastes it. They taste the same; his stomach, fingers and mouth must be brothers or at least nakama-
Just the thought of the word makes his stomach explode and replace blood with bile. A sob latches onto the place that breaths are born. He rolls onto his side, empties his stomach and stands up slowly. His head is banging around all over the place- he is content on top, but underneath there is something awful, forgotten, untouchable.
It is then that he realizes that his stomach and fingers and mouth are brothers in blood. He looks down to the tattered remains of something red and stares dumbly at the deeper crimson bubbling out from underneath, a long gash over his stomach staining the black sand beneath him. A wave of light-headedness infests his head and whines in his ears.
He turns from staring at the sea, which was so comfortable and so natural. It hadn't given him any answers yet. He was mad at it, but you couldn't stay mad at the sea so he didn't. The sand was singing and he could hear it because it had so much of his crimson on it they were brothers too. The beach is a narrow strip and the sky is candy in simple strings.
Up the beach, when the sand forgets to push and the grass in a thousand pastel blues forgets to stop. The trees open their hands and sway gently, waving their leaves in a refrain for the wind. Eternity is saying something. He isn't listening. He picks up a large, rather dead leaf off of the ground and clumsily wraps it around his waist until it gives into ages and crumbles to stardust.
Stardust is like scars, and scars are where chests are. Chests smell of blood and sweat, and sometimes of sake- it depended if there were fights or sad things that day. And then the sad things would come at night, oh, at night and forever and again and again and again-
If he could have reached the upper, live leaves of the trees he would have been able to end the life of something wonderful to stop his blood from turning the grass a beautiful shade of violet underneath him. But he can't because nobody can stretch their body like rubber; that is less right than millions of hands waving good-bye like the sea and the sky touching and parting all at once.
Halfway between dead and living, he decides to choose a leaf that is the same as him. It shivers as he picks it up and moves it under his crimson-stained vest. Pressing it to his stomach brings the startling pain of foreign objects under the skin that brings spots to his eyes and sucks the air from his lungs. He doesn't mind. It quiets his mind a little and focuses his thought less on what he has forgotten and more on what he doesn't remember.
The sea parts its parched lips and produces a present for him.
His feet walk forever down the beach until it is within his grasp. Somewhere, past the hunger and thirst, he's screaming to not look at it- but that is the person inside of him, and he doesn't listen to people who don't exist. He leans over slowly, minding the clumsily held leaf keeping him alive, and picks it up.
The sands of the sea have started to love it, and he wipes off the offending algae with his thumb while apologizing to it inside his head. It is a piece of a white tree that is badly scratched, broken and splintered but was wonderfully loved and white as an object that nature never made. It is the size of his fist and light as the sun.
It has a message for him.
All Blue, it says in fancy black script. His stomach lurches and his brain fires off distress flares. He turns it on one splintered side and finds
Pirate k-
Time stops unapologetically. Hell opens up at his feet. Flame licks at his memory and he remembers too much. Instinctively, he reaches up to his head and feels only grimy hair and a broken promise.
No.
It's not true-
The sea offers no pity for the tiny child, vomiting and wailing for what once was and what will never again be.
--
/revelation