//------------------------------// // Magic's Requiem // Story: Darkened Shores // by Silver Flare //------------------------------// Floating. Floating and silence. Silence so absolute it’s loud as a roar. Drowning out the world. Solitude overwhelms other sensations. Like being underwater. Falling. Half-remembered laughter becomes crystalline scorn. The sharp stab of betrayal causes tremulous fear to bleed into rage. The space between any two hearts holds every peak, every valley, and every desolate waste as a harsh possibility. Friendship discovered afresh is akin to magic. That friendship betrayed is the great hammer that shatters innocence upon the harsh anvil of reality. That friendship lost is the first icy, bitter taste drawn from the deep cup of despair. The world has gone, the sun and moon vanished. One needs simple things to howl one’s agony to the stars. Things like lungs and air and stars. But the cluttered mess of existence had been cleaned up so thoroughly its absence could no longer be mourned. Could no longer be mourned.