And in Her Eyes, They Shook

**The book itself has leather covers, its pages yellowed from its environment, the logo of the Cervanti Family resides at its front cover.**

*In the lands of time and dust, which its heat courses through its people, there were the sound flies buzzing over the ancient urban cities, crop-failure and pestilence. From Her own shadow, through a sequence of chaos, Ankouan moved her irreverent hand across the land with delicate grace.*

Death’s shadow stalked the sand-bricked adobes, who in their ornate fashion, possess great courtyards of grand style. Inside, Lazarus, a young man of inherited status from his revered father, studied politics under the schism of altruism. As the evening settled further toward the night, the creeping smell of rot began to permeate his nose. At first, he found it simply quaint, but the longer it cemented its virulent infestation within him, the more he couldn’t help himself to investigate the source of it. Finally, setting down his tools of study, he pushed the chair from the modest table and worked his way through the manor, circling its many halls, until eventually coming to discovery. It was his porqi cat, Locus. He saw the dried blood crusted on its mouth and the spikes on its back dry and brittle. It had been dead for the entire day, if not two. As he remained frozen, he couldn’t subside the guilt of ignorantly leaving the animal to its agonizing despair. The sensation of saliva sliding down his throat became the momentary focus of his mourning mind, before then snapping back to reality by the horrendous vision of the maligned, diseased corpse.

It took minutes before his legs found themselves again. The call of escape, the need of it, came into fruition -- so he ran. Escaping his home and running into the puzzling sand-brick city, the hustle of the evening citizenry pervaded the dusty streets. They were all sweated from their day of work as they left their work-places to go back home for their eternal rest. Rampaging through like a river’s current, he cleaved a way through the crowd toward the home of his lover, Laridia. His knuckles were desperate as they grew sore from his panicked knocking.

But there was no answer. The silence vacuumed the voices of the rambunctious crowd behind him. The metallic cold of the door handle infects his palm as he turned it forthover. He could feel her captivating character embedded in the living-room’s red furnishings as they seemed to hug him with calm evanescence. But as the softness of the experience left him, he noticed the soft dust caked upon them. He continued forth in search of her, calling out; “Laridia! Laridia!” The perturbing sound of his own footsteps followed him as he turned the corner into her bedroom. He saw her lying there, pale and in woe. The soft light from the window above her bed just barely missed her body as it cascaded across the room, illuminating the soft dust that seemed to gently fall from the ceiling. In confused dread, he approached her with outreached hands. They touch her blushless cheeks like dead leaves falling onto still water. She was dead.

The bustling crowd was gone when he stepped from the door. The dusted road, fitted with its nameless buildings, caged him in. His dolorous voice called out for a soul, but there was no reply. The hot sun above felt closer than ever as he took upon urgency to escape the city. The desolate, bleak, bleached road was long gone of its charm, only replaced by the remnant evidence of footsteps having shuffled the sand that rested amongst its cracked clay.

His chest pounded as he ran. The houses were ghostly, leaving only the cries of fresh widows to leak through the windows. When he escaped the city, the sight of dying crops stalked him like a chasing panther growing only closer to his heel. A blinding white began to engulf his vision, burning his eyes, as a coldness reduced his body to sterile ice. The crops faded and the cries of widows were sedated as he felt the weight of death enter him.

Then, dreadfully distinct against the bright, a massive burning palm of black reached through and lifted him. As it pulled him up, a woman’s face reached through the white and gazed back to him with eyes of swirling beauty and a smile of tranquil. Her voice, reduced to nothing but the hollowed backroom of sound, challenged him:

***“What wicked little twist of fate***

***placed you here upon my plate.***

***Here; where no one can hear your cries.***

***Where were your gods to steer you through?***

***Perhaps your gods forsaken you.***

***Otherwise, why lead you here to die?”***

*The palm swallowed him in its grip, easing him of the blinding pain and panic. When the final moments were upon him, he spoke out to the darkness:*

      *“**The land I see is nothing,***

***gone to the void of the bright.***

***A knife’s double-edge***

***used to carve my soul of dredge.***

***To think I met it with nothing***

***but the veiled fumbling of a fight.”***

*The echoing cries of a father filled the room of his son’s study. A poisoned wine glass rested cracked on the floor next to the boy.*