from death into life

Young Aldin of Wiloh had never contemplated death. It was almost strange — so many around him had the tendency to obsess over it, to clamor and claw almost desperately at their own perceptions of the end to know death as much as they could: when it would come, why it would come, where it would take them when it did.

But Aldin was not like such others. To him, it all seemed much simpler. Death would come, whenever it did, and there was no way to truly envision it before it arrived. So he had not wasted the little time he had to himself, between working and sleeping and, admittedly, plotting grandiose plans of rage-fueled delusions, on his own eventual nonexistence as a human being — for the day would come.

And so it had.

The clashes in the distance are death. They resound in Aldin’s ears, sending violent tremors down his aching spine. The pain from the open gash in his chest, just below his heart, is the only thing keeping him conscious enough to hear the world breaking around him, coming apart at the seams. The sky flickers with a crack and a flash, and Aldin can make out the shape of the goddess, the very one that had consumed his every waking thought for so long — her long, golden hair blowing wildly in the wind, her once loose-falling dress clinging to her purple blood-soaked frame, her left arm gone, replaced with a bloodied stump below her shoulderblade. Her hand clasps around the wound hard; Aldin watches her fingers dig in. A new arm, strong and bare, rips itself out from the mangled flesh, curling anew.

The other figure is shadowed, silhouetted from this distance, no doubt lingering where her opponent can see her. She will not come for Aldin again. She awarded him one last mercy, if these nightmare creatures called goddesses offered such things — throwing him far away to watch the skies from afar, left to bleed and die away from the one he hated most.

Death would come; this, he had always known. Melody had always said that it was reassuring, the reminder that it would. Something, at the very end of the road, was waiting for them. In death, humanity had a sense of inherent belonging, even if such a perspective was rather macabre; Melody often tended to be. But Aldin understood it well enough: the meaning of the end, the thrill in the loss. They were not forsaken. They were not fateless. Something existed out there in the great beyond to take them away.

If there was meaning in death, there was meaning in life too; that was where he and Melody differed. Strong as she was, and as happy as she could be, so happy that the room would glow with the sound of her infectious, cackling laughter, Melody could never be persuaded to value her life. She was a scared, solemn thing, quiet and timid and all too restless, haunted by thoughts of what was and what would be. It was sensible that death, to her, served as meaning, as an escape from all that plagued her so. But for Aldin, angry, ambitious, and indomitable not by choice but by disposition, death was a threat to all that drove him. His life was all he knew, and all that mattered. He couldn’t muster a fear of anything beyond it, even now.

Perhaps Melody was more human than he was, in that way. Perhaps fear should have come to him more naturally; perhaps it would have saved him from such a sad, gruesome fate.

Even so, none of it mattered now. The wound in his chest is fatal, and his body is cold and motionless, rotting away into the earth. If the blood loss won’t take him, the goddess will. She would find him. She always did.

Here, lying under the flashing light of the glistening sky, Aldin did not know the meaning of his life for as long as it had lasted. He knew the love he had and gave, and he knew the hurt that had burdened his heart for so long, yet only one emotion, to him, seemed clear as he watched the golden goddess dash across the setting sun for the shadowy figure far away, her sword raised high in the air, her beautiful face twisted into a cruel smile.

To watch gods clash in his final moments — a different human would be enamored, in awe, mistaking the very sight of death for some sort of revelation. But all that burns in Aldin’s heaving chest is hate, a feeling so stark it clouds his gaze on the crackling skies, surpassing even the agony of the ripped-open flesh beneath his fingers.

He can do nothing now but wait. This much, for as long as he had lived, remained true. Death, when it comes, will mean something. But perhaps Melody, sweet, clever, hopeless Melody, had been right about the aimless reality of being human in this world. For the moment before death, Aldin knows now, is not any final cognizance, but rather one last smallness. It is an unshakeable insignificance twisting in his gut; it is a firefall plummeting from the sky as he burns alive from below.

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Thanks so much for reading! ❤️❤️

I hate that I haven’t posted on here in so long :( I miss reading everyone’s work and engaging with you guys so much, and I’m absolutely going to make the time to soon. Life is just too haphazardly busy sometimes; it’s hard getting to do all the things that bring us joy.

I’m aiming to finish my first novel by the end of this year… will it actually happen? That is the question. Probably not, but hey, I’m going to try my damnedest. If you’re working on your own novel or other literary work, or if you’ve been published/self-published, let me know in the comments about how the process was for you, or, even better, about what it’s about! I’d love to hear about your experiences and check out your work!!