Chapter 8: Sanctuary
…
Red.
A red feeling.
[...] looked down.
White and red. It burned; it choked [...] without touching her throat.
The pitchfork was torn out of [...]'s abdomen, and a woman to her right let out a deathly scream.
A book fell from [...]'s hands. Panicked words were spoken, but she couldn't discern them. As [...] crumpled to her knees in the snow, the screaming woman was forcefully silenced with a hand, reduced to a sobbing silhouette in the blizzard.
"Da-" The slightest exertion reduced [...] to curling into a ball. Yet even now, that ethereal concert was playing.
Second arpeggio… then a four-chord, a minor fall to the third note. With the seventh note pressed, the tension sought resolution.
[...] resolved it to the eighth note.
Two glacio dreadmanes pounced from the fog, passing the crumpled, bloody form on the ground. There were sounds of a struggle, then screams.
Silence. Tears streaked from [...]'s face. The concert had not resolved at all. It was blaring. [...] could hear so many in the fog singing for her.
I'm sorry.
The glacio dreadmanes appeared again, red slathered from their lips to their throats and chest.
The symphony grew louder.
They approached the girl lying in the snow and curled around her, pressing their body against hers. Despite being shielded from the blizzard's winds, the girl's heart had already frozen over.
I'm sorry… I'm so sorry.
And when [...] closed her eyes, behind her eyelids she saw a table, and around that table…
…
[...] was jolted awake. The glacio dreadmanes dashed from under her. [...] laid in her newly-thrown spot, not enough strength to even take a full breath of air.
The snow drifted upwards. It was so soft, it could have been an illusion of the snow storm growing still.
Then it was a meteor shower driven upwards. Pearly lines cut the horizon into a thousand pieces.
The symphony switched to a different progression, and as if he were always there, a man clad in white stood before [...].
The ground sang a jarring baritone. Eating into the icy dunes that formed the landscape, countless particles of white rocketed towards the sky.
Two eyes of coal looked down at [...]. The winter coat the man wore came up into a fur collar that opened at the front; a black, cloth-mask covered his nose and mouth.
The snow accelerated into a swirl and whipped at the man's coat. The long, black scarf tied around his neck flew like a flag in a storm. He did not speak a single word.
As if it were written in the girl's soul, there was an unspoken question for which she gave an unspoken answer:
I want them to live…
In the middle of a white hurricane that formed a tunnel to the sky, [...] prayed.
Second arpeggio…
[...] gasped.
A four-chord, a minor fall to the third note. With the seventh note pressed, it sought resolution.
Ice returned to the girl's unfeeling body as she awoke to find herself again on her knees, cradling her stomach.
[...] raised the symphony to the major fourth. The song would travel further this way, the desire for resolution unfulfilled.
Desperately, [...] looked out into the blizzard. The ice was so thoroughly ground to dust that it was as though looking through a cloud. No matter how much she scanned with her eyes, there was only pure white; nevertheless, a new feeling filled her lungs.
The white-clad man approached from her side. A low voice sounded, "Your heart is singing, yet you no longer have the strength to smile." He extended a hand to [...]. "Come with me, and I'll give you that strength again – enough strength to protect the smiles of all those you love."
The girl shivered with her whole body. Despite this, she scanned the blizzard again – then a third time, as if she had prayed to someone other than the man before her.
Even though the man's mouth was covered, his smile was evident in his eyes. "Yes, even their smiles."
At this, [...] turned to him, her mouth a hopeful circle.
"They will smile now," the man said, "and they will smile forevermore in paradise, when my kingdom descends on Solaris-3."
[...] looked into his eyes, and they were unwavering black. She gingerly put her hand in his. When the man clad in white wrapped her abdomen with his bandages, it was as though her wound had gone out of focus: no more pain, no more seizing. The white-clad man gently took her up into his arms.
"Wait," [...] protested. She looked back where she had been laying. The white-clad man followed her gaze. Not far from a large blot of red in the snow, there was a book, half-buried. He bent over to pick it up: Macbeth by Shakespeare.
The man chuckled. "Do you like plays?"
[...] nodded, snatching the book from the man and holding it tight against her chest.
Her vitality returned quickly, thought the white-clad man. "Then I will also promise you this: the plays you write will be known throughout my kingdom. How is that?"
At this, [...] rested her head against his chest. She stayed like this as they walked for a long time, until she succumbed to slumber. All the way, the white-clad man wondered what name he should give her to signify the beginning of her new life.
A/N: (edit) when making this chapter in a word processor, the name was hidden by highlighting the word with a black background. However, ff dot net does not support that, so it had to be edited and replaced with underscores. (another edit) apparently ff dot net compresses multiple underscores into a single underscore, which is annoying and not very good to look at, so I now have replaced the underscores with dashes. (yet another edit) it seems ff dot net also compresses dashes, so I replaced it with [...]. Hopefully this is the last edit required. (final edit) it compressed again, but this result is tolerable.