I spent many days and night considering the state of our souls - our salvation - after our second awakening unto death. We existed in some strange plane of dulled, disembodied pain and numbly hysteric disbelief, brought about when one of us had the absence of mind to dwell on what had happened to us all, that which should never happen to a man or any living thing - to exist beyond its calling. All too often I passed young men, once whole, whose faces gaped in an unreal hollowness, eyelids burned, sockets vacant, jaws unhinged for loss of tendons or loss of sanity into terrible silent screams.
But our existence is merely that, an existence, and a man's - a creature's - sheer existence, its embodied state of being, is hardly sin. An act to extend that futile existence is, perhaps, a transgression, but penance can be paid for acts, and prayers spoken, intercession granted.
Eventually I became reconciled enough with this strange place we found ourselves, this strange state we have found ourselves in - what choice did I have? - and watched the bones shifting beneath the cracks of my charred skin with something approaching wonder. How is it that the dead yet live and the mind yet ponders, tethered to this shattered form?
The Lord once called to life dry bones in the desert. May he do the same with cursed sailors trapped in the uneasy tides of an eternal twilight.