Orange fire spluttered from the wing rockets as Art was forced into his seat. People around him were panicking. Some were being held down by other passengers, others were in quiet refrain. He couldn’t hear a thing other than the static from the attack. It swirled around in his mind and his ears crackled with electricity. The world gone mad around him and he couldn’t even hear its ramblings before death.

For so long she had tried to cultivate the illusion of mystery. Once she had seen a magic show and realised that behind closed doors and deep down in blue ocean labyrinths, lived not wise magical creatures or incredible Naja, but emptiness. The magic was a show designed to fool and trick. It was a sad realisation that day, but a practical one. In that wise, bleary eyed moment she had seen behind the veil to the dead wall behind. It may be painted, it may be pretty, but it is the same as any other. And with that, she became a magician of sorts. That day she also turned to religion, not through belief or faith, but through hope. Hope that one day, perhaps in her lifetime, the Gods would see fit to restore magic and majesty to the dead world she knew so well. As she looked out the window and down at the Western Block below she felt sadder than she had ever felt in her life. In her strange, self contained vision of magic and sadness, she had not even realised the man sitting next to her, his whole body facing the window side of the Silver Cu. His face could not be seen as it was pressed against the glass. His ears occasionally flashed red from the explosions below, ghosted from the window.

Art gazed down through the thin blanket of clouds and admired the colours of the burning Western Block. Static had given way to an uncomfortable feeling between his ears. His mind seemed to sweep and swoop over the landscape below. Familiar buildings let loose their fiery captors inside with roofs exploding into a shower of stars. Thinking he heard himself weep, Art stopped his inspection of the carnage below and listened intently. He found that his mind was curiously still and that the sobbing was real and not imagined. Turning, he saw that the lady next to him was the one who was upset. She had her head in her hands.