135 | BE AMONGST THE STARS

I was numb, inside and out, as I watched. My mind struggled to break free of the overwhelming melancholy, the agony so strong that the only way I could deal with it was to feel nothing at all.

The cold helped. A bitter wind whipped between the boulders, sending snowflakes into a flurry. They turned my vision blurry: everything was black and white and grey again, as it had been in the time before Ares. Everything, that was, except for the blood.

And there was so much blood.

It was start against the pale backdrop of the mist and snow. A physical mark of violence, marring the purity of the white beneath. And, atop its own puddle of red, sat my ear. I shuddered every time my gaze drifted over it; it was the sort of thing I didn’t want to look at but also couldn’t look away from. It was grotesque, torn at a ragged angle, the flesh pink within –

My lip curled. It looked so alien to me now, that missing piece of me. I couldn’t imagine how I looked, bloodied and battered, one ear gone.

A sn