Ashes fell from the sky where rain should run wild. Ashes catered the ground where grass pure green should sleep peacefully. Ashes whispered in the wind where fresh air should flow freely. Ashes. Ashes in shades darker than death itself, that brutally murdered any light that once flew in angel's wings. But now it's gone. It's all gone. They're all gone. I'm nearly gone. All that's left is dark skies and lost souls on the cold Winter breeze. Yet hidden beneath it all, when you pulled back the sour was a beauty so sweet it reverberated through tombs of history, and reflected on every story that was to be written.
My throat was dry as the bones of the corpses around me, a blanket of ashes in their eyes, in their mouths, and in their minds. Dead. Thinking of ashes. Dead. Surrounded by ashes. Dead. Returning to ashes. At least they looked calm, calm as still water.
I longed to feel the tickling sensation of water against my throat, Let it roll through my body until all memory of this was lost in the waves of the ocean that was my thoughts, just another petal in a jungle of flowers. I wasn't naive. I knew that this blackened rose would grow taller and thrive more than the others, and no matter how many times it was cut down, it would grow back. Everything would make me pluck at it, touching it with soft tender hands until it cut me deep and left a scar that would stay until my dying breath. Because no matter what, the roses would prick you, no matter what, the roses would kill you.
There was one source of water. But I couldn't even bear to look at it. The sky bled above a dashing blue river. It was a red that I would never see again, a red I could prefer to see than the sight before me. It was the same red that pumped through my veins, the same red that flowed through my body. It was the same red as the bloody roses that dotted distant fields. So far away they stood, but I couldn't touch them. Distant fields lay in another world that wasn't destroyed by everything that was. The nearing Fields had disappeared in a gust of wind.
Below the blood sky and the dark red sun, there lay a river cutting through the ashes. But that wasn't the only thing floating in the river. Bodies. Dead bodies. Drowned bodies. And a live one. A young girl who must've been maybe five years old was screaming out for help, fighting against the current. "Help me, help me please!" She was so loud and scared her screams could be heard a universe away. But I stood, frozen, unable to move, unable to help her. And down she went. Guilt was the stream that cut through me, anger the tears that fell from my eyes, depression the water in the back of my throat. I looked down at the river, and then, I was unable to explain what I felt. Fear. I know it now. Fear. Fear cuts deeper than any blade or bullet could ever even hope to. Fear.
Earlier I told you the roses would cut you until you die. And they did.