four. starlight

It did not matter now—what he could have said or done, what he didn’t say or do—because now… now was far too late. The air is tinged by the metallic tang of gunpowder and an odd sharpness of something else that is wholly unfamiliar.

Time becomes inconsequential (he knows this, can say it with certainty), like the breath he takes the second before reality hits, and the details of what happens become both magnified and blurred, senses sharpen and grow razorblade-dull, and emotion roars loudly until it’s silenced by bullets meeting unprotected skin and concrete. The blood is not the fairy-tale colour of poetry and fiction, it does not blossom, nor does a sick fascination overcome him, and ‘bittersweet’ does not describe the taste in his mouth.

Should… should there be pain? Fear? Where is it? Why can’t he feel it (whatever it should be)? Is he… is he…?

The first of the rain touches him. He does not feel it and wonders at it—wonders at the jagged hold of emptiness, and the slow ache beneath his bloodstained breast, as the dark of the sky opens and reveals a star far too bright.

Jor… Jordan?