Prologue
Clocks! Always the damn clocks. They perched on heads even before the injured became the dead. Even before the Grimm had finished taking the soul off man, and life from body. I leaned back against a post as clocks raced across the city, casting themselves over like ghosts in haunting.
The town square ran with time. Clocks in the cars, clocks in the houses, clocks in the buildings. People posed as people did. Some walking back home, some sitting on the pavement, yelling alms and whatnot. All the same, clocks rose above their heads like vines choking a branch, twirling gleefully as if driven by a need to announce the message: something bad is going to happen. The question now was, to whom were they addressed to?
Well, it couldn't be me. I was just a random blonde out for stargazing.
The hands pointed heavenwards at the unseen twelve, while Domrémy went on with their lives. It looked like a magic trick, the scene. These things appearing out of the air. If only someone could see them, perhaps it would all disappear like a joke. But then, nobody noticed.
As if receiving the signal, the hands moved synchronously, symphonically. It was a tune that telegraphed an immoveable, inexorable sense of dread. It curdled blood to ice.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Eleven. Ten. Nine. Eight.
The countdown had begun just like New Years. However, this tomorrow everyone looked forward to did not exist in the first place. Fate would not allow it, and the scene played out before me. No one relishes to witness the death of so many, more so if you knew the many. Even the moon, broken as an abused child, was unwilling to spectate, hidden behind the clouds. I felt lonely. Forlorn. A solitary audience to this tragedy.
Seven. Six. Five.
"This is not a drill. Please evacuate immediately. This is not a drill," the town speakers blared. Always with the drills. Always with the hurrying. I found that to be quite useless. Besides...
It was too late.
I knew, more than a child's hopes and dreams, that they will die.
They will die tonight.
Four. Three. Two.
That simple, glaring truth put the fear in me, for I discovered how quickly everything; house and dog, family and friends, school and marks, love and promises, can fade away. Was it too late to say I wished it were they who survived, instead of me? Was it too much to claim that I could've saved one more? Could've stopped the problem from erupting in the first place?
One.
I suppose it didn't matter. Time walked forward, not back. If there's one thing my semblance had taught me, dark as it was, it's that there's not much you can do about the past.
You can only drag yourself forward. Else, you're left behind.
Twelve.
The clocks faded teasingly, embers in the ashes.
And.
And.
And.
A bright light. I knew nothing else.
On the night the town of Domrémy, home to tens of thousands of people, was razed to the ground, I saved a life. It was a pathetic little boy's, and I wished I hadn't. Even an ant was worth more than him.
On the night the bombs bloomed, everyone was in the garden, leaning over to smell the flowers. A tea party.
On that dreadful night, the sole uninvited guest was the one spared from the inferno.
What a shame it was me.