Soundless

[07.06.00] » by Kylee Adams

Silence.

How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? The time fell one into another... It felt like days, stranded upon that desolate shore. Like years, surrounded by the silent corridors of before, like the ethereal strains of a dream, lulling him into sleep... The ship was a skeleton, a broken mass of metal, the shredded remains of glass and steel, pure in its flight now ruins of before.

Nothing lived upon that shore. Alien birds whirled overhead the remnants of what seemed to have once been a small ship, meaning slipped past, like sand through his fingertips, like so many memories... All of it gone. Stolen to the vaults of time. Songless notes of a lullaby curled past delicate ears.

Something stirred...

How long had it been?

Aqua blue eyes peered up to the newborn sun.. Like hope in sorrow, like light in darkness, was not comforting, was not warming, it was only blinding...

The small child greeted the afternoon... Or was it morning? It meant not difference to. He only looked up, slowly, clutching the remnants of the ship like an anchor to reality, curled up amidst the wreckage. Ten at best, or perhaps younger... Dark hair of a cerulean hue hung about him, disheveled by time, feline ears poking out. A labcoat several sizes too big clutched his petite frame... He seemed so small ... weak ... scared. Fate no longer could tell him what to do. It was hopeless...

Only a child.

Eerie strains of a soundless lullaby...

Are they dead?

Had he any right to acknowledge fatality? To be here in the first place, not outside in the warm summer sunlight, eating ice-cream of playing tag? Had he any right to sit here, at the edge of the crashing waves... Had he any right to be here, alone as countless times before.

Light. He wished only for light. It kindled around his palms, untouched, unborn, darkness in the flames, monsters he had summoned, lives that he may take. Was that who he was? Was he those flames, prismatic, leaping in the light with a shadow all their own? He felt no warmth. He was detached. Soaked. The waves surged around him...

Or was he only human.

Had he lost those who had cared about, and those he hadn't tried to...

Am I?

Sunlight stroked the desolate shore....

....And he wondered, in the silence

Pale shafts reflecting the sea, hard as silver in the sun....

...Whether in some way he could tell the world, that he, too, with the free the sunlight shared

Footsteps crunched along the shore, distant, upon deafened ears...

...And that he, too, wanted all the things that he once had loved

The world was still...

...And that he could only explain, only understand

The world was silent....

...That he could only smile

He was alive...

...That he could only live

But that was all...

He looked up, hopeless, through jaden eyes, the seas cradling as he hoped for them to take him, too. He acknowledged his parents beneath the waves, he acknowledged his life and how easily it could fail, and he knew, that he knew nothing, huddled survivor upon the shore. Was he the one that deserved to live? His life had all ready slipped past... Too quickly, like a shooting star, too quick to catch or hold, only to make wishes that never come true.

Silence.