Neytopia › Part 1: Dawn › Chapter 7

Thunder

He rode across valleys and hills sheltered by darkness. He had to run away, ashamed of what he had done. A few hours later, a sleepless boy wandered into her house so she would read him a story, as she often did for many other sleepless kids. The boy screamed when he saw her lifeless body, soon alerting the whole village. Everybody gathered around her house. They wept and cursed the skeptic man. But when the first rays of dawn came, her skin began to light up once again. Her people ran away from her house, blinded by her light. Finally she exploded, making the roof fly away and the walls fall.

She walked out of the rubble completely naked, her pale skin shining under the rising sun. She smiled at the crowd that kneeled in adoration,

Gather your horses and ride in four groups: north, east, south and west. Find him and arrest him, but do not harm him.

She dressed up and rode north. She knew he was smart and would probably go where she wouldn’t want to follow him for fear of being captured by her enemies. Her group spotted him in the distance only a few hours later. They followed him for two days, losing sight of him a couple of times.

He camped in a tall cavernous mountain to sleep. They approached the mountain at night, but her skin shone so bright that it betrayed them. He spotted her from atop the mountain as he looked one last time at the plains he thought was leaving behind. The vision gripped him with horror,

She, she has come back from the dead!

His face was pale, his throat shut. He could hardly think. Turning away from her, he ran downhill. So fast he tried to run, he tripped with some rocks and fell. The hunting party rushed after they heard the sound of rolling boulders and a wailing cry. When they reached him, they found him broken, his bones crushed against a rock, screaming in agony. Some of the smaller, sharper rocks had pierced the skin after the fall. Blood ebbed from his whole body.

It was her that cried on top of him now. They both wished for a second chance. But they wouldn’t have it. For they knew, no matter how much they had despised each other, they could have done something great together. It was too late now, everything was lost. His lungs collapsed. He coughed blood, unable even to say the only thing he wanted to say: “I’m sorry”.

But she refused to surrender, she refused to accept his fate. She needed him around… somehow. She instructed her soldiers to draw an image in the ground with stones. They built a small-scale replica of the stone monument where she had sacrificed his wife. The shape was the image of dawn: a semicircle with lines erupting from it over a horizontal line. They placed him in the middle of it, and as he struggled to live just a little longer, she recited the spell. At first skeptical, then with all her heart, the words poured out.

She took blood from the chest of the men that were with her and painted the broken man with it. The chanting became wilder and louder. Then the men joined in, dancing around the stones in a frantic circular motion. Finally the broken man’s body erupted into a flash of light up to a storm above them, making an irregular path followed by a loud cracking sound that was heard across the world. The storm roared on, and more of the same violent light-explosions occurred. It was him, riding the storm. He had become something new she called “thunder”. She knew he would never leave her from that day. All she needed was to find a storm.

From that day until the end of time, he would be born and die screaming in electric agony, thousands of times around the world every day. But he would be alive.