Chapter 2: Chapter 1A - A Lesson Learned in Loss
Chapter One
They say that this city stands at the edge of the world as a boundary between the sky and the sea. It is a city built for hope but stained by tragedy. Countless years ago, someone named this place Bones City to honor the lives lost in darker days. It is said that we were meant to pay homage to the fallen, but I have found that ideals and reality rarely align in truth. This city swears to honor its heroes and venerate its victims, but the people of Bones City shut themselves off from the world a long time ago. When monsters roamed the dusty plains and endless meadows, willful men used their strength to build walls instead of weapons. By some sick twist of hypocrisy, we revere acts of bravery but hide ourselves from a broken world. We applaud the valor of men who guard the walls from the safety of the city as if it is unthinkable to step out into the sand. The city leaders orchestrate occasional gatherings by the sea where we meet to mourn the dead despite the part we play in their passing.
But Bones City is a place of perpetual night. It is somber, it is grim; it is lit by starlight. The darkness pervades – it is our birthright. But the long quiet shadows, which levy poor sight, have caused for some citizens a small touch of fright. They run from the darkness and into the light. They hide from the sky, the starry twilight; they hide from the world and never ignite, like a fish that won’t swim, or a bird that fears flight.
I myself was affixed by their same conundrum but for a different reason. I lived most of my life locked in a shell, but it was not because I detested the endless starlight. It was not because I feared the darkness. It was not because I grew up alone in the sterile walls of a crowded orphanage. It was not because I sought recompense from a world I felt had failed me. It was because I was a wildfire with nothing to burn. I was a slave to pure greed, but I never found an object for my avarice; I had never found anything worth fighting for. I had believed that I could push myself to achieve anything I ever wanted, to the extent that I named myself Asivario as a testament to my own avarice, but I never had a chance to prove it. I never had a purpose. Not until I met Alyssa. And in a way which might confuse most others, I regretted the simplicity with which we fell in love. From the moment I met her, she was all I ever wanted. From the moment I whispered her name for the first time, I was ready to do anything for her. When I kissed her for the first time, I swore to shatter the stars which shone in the sky if only she would ask. And in some twisted way, I truly believe that it is for this reason that the stars first called to cross us.
I still remember the night I walked to her home beneath a path of flickering streetlights. They illuminated the quiet roads just enough to overpower the starlight and illustrate the shadows. I occasionally glanced through the windows of the homes I walked past. In some, I saw loving couples sit together on a couch. In others, I saw people tiredly waste the time away watching something inane on their television sets. I saw a child stare out of an unwashed window while his mother laughed boisterously from in another room. Inside every house was a little world. Every glance was a window to a small fire seeking fuel. They were content, but they lived their lives as a portraiture of mundanity. They lived their lives as a forfeiture to inanity.
As far as these little worlds were concerned, it was an ordinary night. But by the nature of sonder and separate worlds, my story began on that night. I could tell that something was wrong in the moment that I approached Alyssa’s doorstep. A syzygy of stars in the sky suggested the tragic truth that her home was empty. I could sense her absence in the moment I set my right hand upon her door. I mentioned before that I am the ocean and she is the rain. I am dry and shallow, empty and alone. If I dared to stand without her, I would drown in my own stale water and poison the thirsty air. I hurried to her house where she waited patiently; I pushed past the door and threw myself inside her open home. But met only with darkness, I collapsed onto the floor. I would do anything for the rain. I needed to feel her seep into my skin. I found only a drought when I needed a hurricane.
I heard a voice call from the darkness behind me and say, “I saw city security haul her away.”
I said to myself I saw her just yesterday. I held her there in the morning gray, and it was then that she had begged me to stay. I told her it’s okay, that I would just be gone a day, cutting fish at the factory just outside the bay. But time played its tricks, and my promise lost its way. I lost her because I dared to work all day. I lost her because I did not heed her wish to stay.
The bystander explained, “They put her in chains. I didn’t hear all the details, but she mentioned that she has papers in the back. City security wouldn’t listen. They said she was a nomad who slipped in through the wall. If you really want to help her, it might be best to find her papers.”
“It would not help her; those papers were nothing more than a desperate anchor to save her from the storm of life outside our walls. They are fake and can serve but only at a glance. Any eye worth the starlight it draws would realize it in seconds. Please tell me, kind stranger. What becomes of the nomads caught by city security?”
I stood upright and wiped my anxious eyes, fighting against the enervating darkness inside myself. I wouldn’t trouble the bystander with my frantic fear or helpless panic. I even convinced myself to stay calm internally, though this is admittedly a consequence of my extreme monomania. No amount of misery or mourning would ever get her back.
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but they dragged her off hours ago. I’m sure they already banished her outside the city by now. Sorry you had to hear that from me. I didn’t think to do anything at the time,” admitted the helpful stranger.
I didn’t realize at the time that he had no reason to wait around in the street for hours after she was taken. To this day, I never conclusively learned the reason for this. In classic tunnel-vision fashion, I couldn’t think about anything else at that moment. If it did not directly have to do with saving Alyssa from the monstrous world outside the city walls, then it did not matter. So even as I said the words, I knew I was pushing my luck; I knew this kind stranger could have me arrested if he so wanted. I asked without tact, I questioned with gall, “She is my everything; she is my all. Do you know how a person could exit the wall?”
The onlooker merely nodded and said, “I can show you the way, but it’s a long road to tread.”
Some would say that my choice was precipitous; city security had ruined lives for far less. If I were caught violating the sanctity of the walls which were once built to safeguard our city, then I would be arrested and sentenced as a miscreant. Almost as a slap in the proverbial face of the courage for which our city is said to revere, anyone who bypasses the walls in either direction is treated as a heartless reprobate. The thought is that a danger lurks in the badlands outside our city, so anyone who passes the wall exposes the citizens to an unknown threat. Those who venture outside the city never do return, and that is their proof of the terror. The city leaders speak of a threat that endangers us all – monsters that lurk in the world outside the wall.
The stranger had not misled me; we walked through the starlit streets of our city in silence. The sky was clear, and a cold wind swept in from the sea. The frigid touch wrestled the moisture from the air and forced it to settle on the windows of every home we passed. It settled on my skin and shimmered. The quiet roads glistened as the moisture reflected the light of the stars. Distant streetlights illuminated empty alleys, and the flicker of television sets glimmered inside the houses. I examined the moisture and the lights to distract myself from the enervating truth that we approached the large wall at the edge of the city. The kind bystander led me to a dark building beside the city wall. He knocked gently upon the hardwood door and then took a backward step.
I turned to the kind man with a smile and said, “She is my needle, and I am her thread. For this, I cannot thank you enough.”
But the stranger answered as he then walked away, “I truly hope you can find her one day.”
[Author's Note: There are two more parts to this chapter.]
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone