The Mate They Threw Away
It simply existed, fully and completely and without apology, and I was suddenly inside it with no transition and no warning and no opportunity to prepare.
The sky was red. Not sunset-red, not the red of something borrowed or passing through, an eternal red, deep and absolute, the colour of something that had decided on itself long ago and had not reconsidered since. Lightning moved across it in constant, silent arcs, not jagged but almost graceful, like the sky was breathing. There was no sun. There was no moon. There was only the red and the light and the perpetual, beautiful violence overhead.
The air tasted like copper and cold stone.