Into the Flames of Where This Began

“Tell me about God,” she demands in a scream. “Tell me about power and life and the will of man. Tell me about everything I already know. Everything I already am,” she screams with all the air in her lungs. We took everything from her and now she wants to return the favor. “Why?” Is all I can manage to say through the pain. “Why not?” She asks curiously back. A break from all the pain that she is feeling. All the pain she is pushing onto me. My mind finally doesn’t feel as though it is on fire. “Why not talk now? That’s all anyone wanted to do before, and now everyone wants to just go quiet. Is it because you all figured out just how powerful I truly am?” The bodies of our once mutual friends lay next to my feet. “Everyone thinks, everyone thought I was so weak. That little miss me with her fragile bones could do nothing. I’m powerful, in a world full of powers I am the most powerful and that makes you scared. It makes all of you scared,” she stares me down waiting for a response. “So, you have proven. You’ve proven your point Emily. Now let’s end this. This isn’t you. This isn’t how we were trained,” My voice goes silent.

Her eyes light up in anger, “Trained?” The pain comes back once again. The feeling of fire running through my veins, through my mind, and through my very being. “I wasn’t trained. I was left behind or have you forgotten?” She asks through the pain. “I never forgot you,” I try my best to say through the pain. “Wrong Nathan, you are wrong. You all forgot about me. Even you. You all left me behind,” she says. The fire inside my head increases, “Because we cared.” I fade in and out of consciousness as my knees hit the hard ground. “Please stop,” I barely manage to beg. “Stop what? Being the woman that you fear? I could have been so much more, but you and every one of them wouldn’t let me. You wanted me to be quiet, to be locked away, but I will no longer be locked away Nathan,” she says with the confidence of a God. “I never,” I try to say. “But you did any way,” she declares as everything around me fades into darkness. “I never wanted any of this,” I try to say through the darkness of my mind. The lost connection of my consciousness. Am I alive or dead? “Welcome to my world,” her voice echoing through my head. Through the pain. Through it all.

Through a haze of confusion I awake in an empty field next to those I once could call friends. Their bodies lay broken, bleeding, and lifeless next to me. I use every ounce of strength to bring my own broken body to its knees. The ground around us is torn to shreds. Pieces of earth lay in mounds all around us leaving a trail of where she has been and where she has gone. I rise to my feet and check those around me. Only to find the worst of what I could have expected. Laying there dead I am the only one to have survived what I assume will be the first of many more causalities to come.

Why? Why did she spare me of them all? Because she broke into my mind and found out I was right? Was it pure luck? Courage is measured by our willingness to throw ourselves back in the fire. Not by our ability to survive. As I stand among the dead I don’t find the courage to run back into the fire. Maybe she was right. Maybe we deserved this all along. We had to have known deep down inside that this was only going to go one way. Did we protect her out of fear or did we do it out of compassion? Her power set wasn’t like ours. It wasn’t controllable like ours. It wasn’t our call to tell her what she could and couldn’t do. We never gave her the choice. We only suppressed what we didn’t know. Painted ourselves the heroes when we were the villains all along. What I must do is not courageous. It is not the right side of right. What I have to do is finish what we should have done in the first place. God’s cannot walk among us. Unchecked they will destroy everything that we have built for ourselves. Kicking what is left of the earth around me I take the steps need to move closer to the fire. Running blindly once again into the flames for the idea of right and the pursuit of all that is wrong. I must finish what we already started.

Some times our actions cause more harm than good… sometimes being “right” really means that we are wrong… so what is the right answer?… To continue to be wrong?… or prove to ourselves and everyone else that we were right all along?… these are the actions and thoughts that we face all the time… The surface is only worth face value… and our actions… our choices… often dig deeper than the surface… not telling you how to think… only that you should…

Because there is no answer… there is no right way to be… there is no set of rules for us to follow… because the world is chaos… but it is up to us to provide the order… to define or redefine it… no one will do it for us… Order breeds chaos and chaos breeds order… it is somewhere in between that we survive…