Character
Raging, burning, flickering fire reflected the depths of my gaze. Fierce, jagged ribbons of it writhed towards the night sky, piercing the darkness with forked tongues of crimson and gold. It was hungry, eating my home with a relentless appetite that could never be sated. Stone by stone, beam by beam, room by room. I could hardly remember the mad dash I had taken to escape the mortuary in the depths of the cellars. I didn't want to think about the bodies I had passed on the way. Whether they were unfortunate strangers or my sisters who I had grown, worshiped, and lived with for as long as my memory could recount.
What I did remember was the commotion that had started it all. Even down there where I could hardly ever hear the sounds of life being lived above my head, I could hear that. The unmistakable sound of blasters, the chest rumbling explosions that had rocked dust and debris from the ceiling. The sound of death.
Not as I knew it. Not the quiet, peaceful death that I worked with every day in the cold, expressionless faces of the people who passed through our house. The violent kind. The bloody, gory, messy, merciless kind. The kind that would be seared into my mind for the rest of my days.
I sank to my knees at the edge of the forest that lay just on our borders. Rain, mud, and worse soaked through my crisp, white robes, but I wasn't aware. Nor did I care.
Even out here, drenched in the earthy petrichor, the air carried the sharp, metallic scent of fresh blood. Like copper coins warmed in a clenched fist. It should have been familiar to me. I'd spent my life learning and living in rooms that made that scent home, but this time it made me sick to my stomach. It roiled in my belly like rancid meat, threatening me with the sour taste of bile in the back of my throat. This blood was too familiar. It came from the people I loved, people who raised me, people I thought would never abandon me.
I couldn't comprehend it. What did we have that was worth this? We kept no gold. We had no credits. Anything that was donated to us went straight back to the people who came to us for help. We were peaceful. Healers. Silently offering both aid and reverence to anyone who needed it with no cost or recompense required.
What had we done to deserve such a fate? We knew of suffering, we knew of loss, we knew of the chaos that the galaxy imparted on the unfortunate, but we had never witnessed it. Never been wrapped up in the politics that caused it. So why?
Fury did not even begin to describe the emotion I felt, but it did not come out that way. Hot, angry tears spilled from eyes, down my cheeks, mixing with the deluge that poured unbound from the skies above. Yet no matter how hard it rained, it still couldn't quench the fires that had been set. They blazed on, every roar and crackle only stoking the coal of fury buried somewhere deep in my soul, yet I could do nothing but stare at it. As my fists clenched and my nails bit into my palms hard enough to break skin, I could do nothing.
I heard no shouts, saw no shadows trying to escape, no signs of life anywhere save for the sounds of my own ragged breaths. I was alone, and I was watching my life turn to ashes before my eyes.
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