What it Feels Like to Cry

"...Red."

The mossy statue by her side turns his faded, crimson eyes to her. He makes no sound.

"What if..." She waits a moment longer to continue her thought aloud. "What if we woke them all up once this is all over?"

He stares into the distance, unfocused. The world has changed over the past years upon years. However long ago it was when he was last awake, he is not quite sure; and in fact, he will never be sure, as she does not remember, either. But the buildings and crashed airplanes and empty cars that he once saw are no longer here.

Nothing remains of the human world.

Vegetation has overpowered every other living thing. Before his face, he sees mounds of decayed bricks and smashed glass being hidden by luscious boughs of shrubs and trees. Green life has flourished in this world, entirely covering its past. From the mountaintop, he can see that there is nothing left that would ever remind him of the past.

If not for the humans still sound in their slumber.

"Who?"

She turns her head toward him. "The humans."

He takes pause. A long pause. A pause that hovers in the air and thickens across his shoulders as he ponders.

"My entire life had been pinpointed... on putting them all to rest," he whispers. "Their loudness had to be quenched, and years ago, I had quenched it."

"But now we have seen the consequences of such a quenching." She lifts a pale hand and motions to the sticky, thick substance draped over the trunks and leaves of towering foliage, a crimson liquid that shows the signs of humans who had been killed in a bloody, grotesque murder. "When the world lost its noise, the Shadows lost their sanity."

The statue still stares into the horizon, drawing in a deep breath. The stone of his shoulders cracks as they rise with every inhale.

"What will happen when we wake them?"

"We have seen what will happen." She looks down at the black of her encumbering robe. "They will be afraid."

"They will be mute."

"They will be unable to walk."

"They will be frail."

"They will be fragile."

"...They will destroy."

She shakes her head. "Not if we raise them right."

"But how can we do so?" Pebbles tumble off the sides of his horns as he turns his head in her direction. Years of separation, and yet she is still just as small as before. "They are built to destroy."

"They were built to create," says the girl softly. "They created. But in the process of creation, they destroyed."

"...They destroyed so much."

She breathes out. He catches the scent of sadness.

"...They did."

They both stop to let the sounds of the world overcome them. The humans often forgot to do this in their own time, and it was, unsurprisingly, of utter importance. The wind swirls. The breeze brushes specks of dirt off his face. The stars twinkle. The drizzling rain patters against the ground of the mountain. Far below, the ocean waves crash into a shore of spiked rock. The world hisses and bubbles and froths and lives with motion.

"Do you remember the children?"

"Yes."

"They remembered nothing when we woke them."

"And they could not talk."

"And they could not walk."

"They were so weak."

"They spent... years... in suspension. In their slumber. They had no memory of the world before. Not even of their names." She stops to look around the slice of land. "The rest of them will be that way."

"But they destroy."

"But they will not destroy if we raise them not to."

"How do we do so?"

"...We wake them." She suppresses a shudder of pain from the chill of her own wounds. "We wake them, and we nourish them. We wake them, and we teach them. We teach them how to live and breathe again."

"They will fear us."

"Then we will comfort them."

They both feel the need to weep. They both feel the need to cry. They both feel the need to sink to the floor of this cavity and sob for the lives that have been taken. But this is not the end; it was not the end from the beginning. It is the beginning. A second beginning. A new beginning. The beginning of the end.

"There must be over a thousand left alive," she manages through a croak. "Venik and his slaves took the rest."

"How many were there before?"

Before he had turned to stone, many, many years ago, they had set up a plan to count each and every living human on the planet as they fell into their slumber. The Shadows had all kept track of the humans, making sure none of them perished over the many, many years, and so the number before Venik came and destroyed them all must be so significantly large.

"Seven billion, if I recall," she states, hiding her hands within the confines of her darkness. "Seven billion people."

He shuts his eyes. He promises himself that he will have the time to mourn the lost. But now is not the time, even after all this time of waiting for a final time. Now is still not the time.

"...We should wake them," he replies quietly. "They must live again."

"We can teach them to create."

"The children can comfort them."

"We can raise them up to thrive."

"We shall let them start again."

He feels something touch his side. Through his stone overlay, she reaches for his hand. "It would have come to this anyway."

She breathes out. He can sense the weakness in her voice.

"The world cannot live on without the creators. The Shadows have not created anything-- Venik has done nothing but inspire destruction. The world needs its people to create."

"Shadows and humans... will finally live in peace."

"Yes." She smiles at the land. "Peace."

They both shut their eyes. And now-- now is the time to weep.

***

Uh, I wrote a whole goodbye here,

But I don’t want to go, so… yeah. You’re stuck with me.