Status: This is a work in progress that'll start taking a very fantastical turn soon. Updates will be slow because I'm very careful with this story. Just bare with me. :)
All of the Embers Fell
Covered in Ash
It’s all a blur from the first eruption of glass in a storefront to my right. I think that the others unfreeze and panic. I know that I am not one of them. I am still frozen, still watching.
Reality X and Y are still intersecting for me, so I can’t move. I suppose that they have uncrossed for everyone else around me; how lucky for the others.
There’s something beautiful about the chaotic scene I stand in, suddenly awash in reds and golds. Glass windows sparkle like pixie dust as they explode violently and are then scattered by some psychotic, invisible Tinker Bell. The moon-puddles’ surfaces are marred by soot and the reflection of flames.
Tick tick.
Tick tick.
Tick tick ti-ck.
The clock is hesitating; its gears must have been warped or knocked out of place. I wonder if the clock is something from Reality Y that only I can hear. Maybe everyone else can hear it, but nobody is paying it much mind?
The ground trembles beneath me; the city’s heartbeat is laborious and strained. I think that I am the lone person that feels it. If everyone else wasn’t so busy running, though, they would realize that the city is dying.
”The chapels down in Kensington are bursting into flames..”*
And every apartment and store and factory is going with them. The flowers’ petals stretch to blot out the moon and stars; a boom of artificial thunder rips apart the previous silence and drowns out the city’s dying shrieks.
Tick tick tick.
Tick tick ti-ck.
Ti-ck.
The clock stops. I don’t know where it was coming from, but I know that everything around me is in flames. I guess that clock wasn’t something from Reality Y, after all.
What replaces the clock’s ticking is a tremor that shakes the city so noticeably that everyone stops for just once second. Then, with a BOOM so loud that it leaves my ears ringing, a nearby apartment building bursts into a shower of flaming bricks and dirt.
Psycho Tink sprinkles more of her cutting pixie dust.
The ashes fall like rain.
Reality X and Y are still intersecting for me, so I can’t move. I suppose that they have uncrossed for everyone else around me; how lucky for the others.
There’s something beautiful about the chaotic scene I stand in, suddenly awash in reds and golds. Glass windows sparkle like pixie dust as they explode violently and are then scattered by some psychotic, invisible Tinker Bell. The moon-puddles’ surfaces are marred by soot and the reflection of flames.
Tick tick.
Tick tick.
Tick tick ti-ck.
The clock is hesitating; its gears must have been warped or knocked out of place. I wonder if the clock is something from Reality Y that only I can hear. Maybe everyone else can hear it, but nobody is paying it much mind?
The ground trembles beneath me; the city’s heartbeat is laborious and strained. I think that I am the lone person that feels it. If everyone else wasn’t so busy running, though, they would realize that the city is dying.
”The chapels down in Kensington are bursting into flames..”*
And every apartment and store and factory is going with them. The flowers’ petals stretch to blot out the moon and stars; a boom of artificial thunder rips apart the previous silence and drowns out the city’s dying shrieks.
Tick tick tick.
Tick tick ti-ck.
Ti-ck.
The clock stops. I don’t know where it was coming from, but I know that everything around me is in flames. I guess that clock wasn’t something from Reality Y, after all.
What replaces the clock’s ticking is a tremor that shakes the city so noticeably that everyone stops for just once second. Then, with a BOOM so loud that it leaves my ears ringing, a nearby apartment building bursts into a shower of flaming bricks and dirt.
Psycho Tink sprinkles more of her cutting pixie dust.
The ashes fall like rain.
♠ ♠ ♠
*This excerpt is from a poem called London's Burning by Matt Pocock. It's a great poem; you should read it! ;)