Chapter 1 - Part 1 - Rebirth

I woke from the darkness and its nameless terrors, to the oddly-comforting feeling of soft feathers brushing against my face. I simply lay there, eyes closed, enjoying this small pleasure that seemed a miracle after the devastation of yesterday. At least, I am assuming it was yesterday. It is very dark now, probably well into the night. It had all happened earlier that morning, or early on some morning, time was skewed in my head. The destruction. The pain. Then the silence.  The day had start just like any other. Got up. Had a shower. Got dressed. Had breakfast. Picked up the book I had been reading the night before, to continue. Everything was normal. Routine.  There had been no warning. No possible way to have known. Even the animals were acting normal, despite the common belief they can sense natural disasters. If you could have considered what ever it was natural.  I was lounging on the couch, in the sun, when I first heard the rumble. I thought it must have just been a plane going by, so I ignored it. But as it continued to grow louder and more violent, I went to investigate. I went out the front door, looking towards the north, the direction the noise was coming from. My first thought was that I was dreaming. A wall of tumbling red and orange fire, as tall as the sky it seemed, was rapidly approaching, roaring its challenge to all who dared oppose it, destroying all that stood in its path. I never reached the second thought.  There was a brief moment, which stretched throughout eternity, of blazing pain, within every fibre of my body and soul, as if each was dipped in molten lava. Or at least, that is the most painful thing I can think of to compare it to. And then, nothing.    I was not sure I wasn’t dead. My awareness began to return in the form of torturing dreams, watching all that I loved, destroyed time and time again before me. This torture was broken by bouts of darkness and silence. But never long enough for me to forget the screams before they began again.  Within these tortures, there was one moment of clarity, which remained concrete and real. A voice, completely androgenous and monotonous, spoke from the darkness.  “You must shape the destiny of this new world.”  Then I returned to my tortured dreaming.   I retched myself from the painful memories and tried to focus on the present. Feathers. Why was I laying on feathers? More importantly, was I alive? I resolved that before anything else, I must open an eye. I then had to consciously decide to open my eyes.  It turned out that it was not night. But then again, it was not day. I was not even sure if either existed anymore. The sky was a glowing blood-red colour, without any signs of a sun, black clouds wisping and whirling through it. They were driven by a heated, sulphurous wind, the same wind that was ruffling the feathers. Feathers. Still not sure if I was alive, I decided to explore why I was lying on feathers. I turned my attention to them and noticed for the first time, they were jet-black. I had expected them to be white, why, I don’t know. But they were black as jet, and just as shiny, while still being soft. Observing them did not explain very much, so my next thought was that I should move. All around me was indistinguishable rubble, blocking any view of anything in front of my. Once more, I had to consciously choose to move. I decided to start small, not knowing what would happen. I started by wriggling my toes. So far, so good. I then moved my fingers, ever so slowly clenching them into fists, then releasing them. There was tension around my shoulder blades and my skin seemed to feel like it had been stretched extra tight but other then that, I felt unscathed. Encouraged by this, I decided I would be best served standing up. This was my first mistake.  As I rose to my feet, the feathers underneath me moved as well, sending me sprawling into the rubble. My hands immediately came out in front of me to break my fall. It was then I first noticed how much my arms had changed. The tightness of my skin now was the obvious result of what looked like tattoos that seemed to whorl up and down my arms. They too were a silky-black colour, much like the feathers, and seemed to flow in asymmetric patterns along my arms, in no visible pattern or recognisable shapes. It did, under closer examination, seem that there was in actual fact only one tattoo on each arm, which doubled and tripled back over itself.  However, breaking my fall demanded more attention at that current moment. As I tumbled into the rubble, the feathers followed me and laid themselves over my back as i tried to stand again. They seemed to cling to my skin, and even when I was upright, they remained. I was known to be fairly intelligent, back when there were still others to judge, but it still took me another few minutes of trying to remove the feathers for it to hit me.   I tentatively slid both hands up my back, slowly making my way towards my shoulders. As I did, I felt what seemed to be liquid on my back, till I realized it was simply more tattoos. My hands finally found the source of irritation and tension. Protruding from my back, at level with my shoulder blades, were what seemed to be wings. Hence that black feathers tripping me when I moved. It became obvious that it was these I had been sleeping on. I marvelled over this discovery for quite a while, also taking time to examine the tattoos that seemed to cover my body. I came to believe that in actual fact, it was all one giant tattoo.  After this period of self-examination, I turned my attention to what remained of the world around me. As far as the eye could see, was a vast, blasted wasteland of charred buildings and the corpses of both once-animate and inanimate objects. Mounds where a tall building or hill used to be occasionally reared their heads, as the lay of the land became clearer to my view. I now saw the valley that the area I used to live in was named after. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke, and my face and chest were occasionally blasted with sulphurous winds.  There was no reason for me to remain were I was, and because all sense of direction was distorted by the sunless sky, I simply picked a direction, and headed off. A correct choice to rectify my previous mistake.  onwards.

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