ragnarök / the end of day
Sinking Darkness
-
The world is destroyed and rebuilt in every instant.
It's one of those useless facts you pick up when your brother is a scientist. It goes along with the various theories of infinity and what heterochromia is, but this one has particular significance for her, because the world fell down in her dreams and was risked every day in battle, in life, in disease or death. It has particular significance for her now.
Although it's not the world. It's her. She can feel the innocence start to corrode her already, as she counts (one, two, three, chants the little girl in the Chinese dress, one, two, three, four. five.). One, two, three. eighty-six is her limit, she knows, but she thinks she's passed that already: eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine.
The innocence is destroying her and remaking her in every heartbeat, and she's not sure how many heartbeats she has left now; nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.
She's never done this before; never pushed herself past her limits to the point where she can barely summon the effort needed to breathe, can only keep fighting (fighting, fighting, fighting, on and on and on).
(And in her mind the little Chinese girl stops, because she cannot count high enough to continue.)
For the sake of the world she loves and the people that make it she cannot fail this. She cannot (will not) fail them.
(The little girl is crying, and her brother holds her, says, it's alright, it'll be alright, Linali. Nothing will ever be right again, she thinks, but maybe it will-)
If time were to freeze in the instant when the world was new and had yet to be destroyed-
If time were to freeze in the instant when the world was gone and had yet to be remade-
She no longer cares if she lives or dies, so long as the destruction is prevented in this one corner of the world.