You are the night-time fear
Her words chill him to his core.It's the way she says it—offering no explanations, no descriptions, no further details. Just 'the barrier', an absolute thing, a universal truth, a thing each and every creature alive knows. Something they have lived with, years and years, and something he has never heard of. He suppresses a shiver, forces his hands to keep moving, gently working salt and death from her hair, wishing his eyes would focus again and this sick, clammy feeling to leave his body.
The barrier. He swallows. Licks his trembling lips. "What barrier?" he asks, quiet, not trusting himself to mask the quiver in his voice if he raises it any louder. The time he's been shut off stretches to decades. There's no other explanation.
But he remembers things, bits and pieces, odd, disjointed fragments. They're still a muddle, a mess, circuits with flawed connections. "I remember some things," he says, deft fingers sorting through her hair down to her scalp. "But most of it feels—scrambled. Diffuse. It might get better with time." It might not.
He has to keep going. Build a second life. "There was a war. We.. The Voice led us." Against who? He thinks the Gods—equal standing? "An order formed in response, and fought back against us. Before that, there was peace. Splendor. We were..." Gods? He thinks not. But praised. Celebrated. Venerated. Admired. Evolved. Ascended.
He doesn't know how to finish the sentence. "Well. I don't know how the story ends, but here we are."
And he sighs.
You are the morning when it's clear
AAMU
