Death cast her gaze on this wretch and turned away

⠀ Unusually cold for this time of the year, even for this place. Huh, guess some things do, in fact, change. He couldn’t go down any further. Even though he knew the way, the path was cut off from the rest of the Sump level almost… twenty years ago? Right. Twenty years ago. To him it felt as nothing but a mere second. A second, passing so hastily, not granting him a chance of processing the horrors of that god-forsaken day. Silco wished he had at least something. A rope or a tether strong enough to hold him while he makes it to the lowest of the low. The actual bottom of Zaun, the last pieces of land with nothing but the abandoned mines underneath it. Hell, he would’ve given up everything in the world to let a pair of wings pierce through his flesh so that he could dive head deep into the darkness and meet with those who he missed the most. His family. His people. Yet the topsiders were wise enough to do the only thing they were good at — hide the trails of blood under layers and layers of soil, so that no one, not a single soul in the world would even dare to search for the rotting fruits of their recklessness. Pretense. A theatre of actors all dancing on a stage made out of bones, while Death herself plays the final chords. Death followed him everywhere just as much as Pain did. Yet somehow, unlike the latter, she was not as willing to put her bony fingers around his neck — Vander did it with much greater passion — but she was still around. Death cast her gaze on this wretch and turned away. Ah, both a blessing and a curse, isn’t it? Silco stood still, in complete silence, as the chemicals in the thick air were slowly filling his lungs, making every next breath a generous gift. There he was, on the edge of a cliff, at the same spot, staring into the abyss for the second time, now with just one eye. An eye, desperately searching for the faces of those he longed for. The faces that no one else knew and no one else would ever remember. Slowly fading away even from his memory, they were the only proof that all of these people existed. Not a single photograph, not a scribble of a pencil depicting their features. Nothing. When he dies, they die with him. He didn’t have to pretend here. There was no one else to pretend for. He was a child, coming to his parents’ grave, leaning forward into the emptiness below the cliff as if to feel a mother’s embrace. He tilted his head slightly, pushing his scarred cheek into the warmth of his own shoulder, gently hugging himself, not afraid to lose balance on this rickety scaffold of stone. Some come to their parents to search for answers. Yet he had no questions to ask. He knew who he was. He was no scourge, no authority. A child having a meltdown for a thousandth time this month? Yes. A feral beast biting the hand that was feeding him this whole time? Probably. A criminal, the middle-man trying to persuade himself into being a martyr? Exactly. But no hero, not for the world. He came here for something else. While he would frequently joke about how the bottom of Zaun was his father and the quarry was his mother, what he actually meant was not something to laugh at. Lying beneath him was his past. And no matter how much he saw Vander and his father Ethan as his family, they were still strangers to him. Complete foreigners at times, speaking a different language, having a different culture. They were Zaunites, but they were not exactly Sump-level-Zaunites. They didn’t know the songs that his mother hummed while braiding his hair early in the morning. The softest locks that had to be cut off when he was “ready”. To wash the ore at the age of three. He grew all of it back, but now there was no one to run her fingers through it. They didn’t know the fairytales that his father told him. The ones he would stay up late for, so that his mother would scold him for his harmless misbehaviors. Dad had a gentle and alluring voice, completely ruined by the poisonous air of the Sump. Silco remembered how he would nestle against him and fall asleep almost instantly, while still trying to catch the ending of the story his father made up this time. Sevika didn’t believe in magic and she tried to convince him that it doesn’t exist for as long as they knew each other as kids. Naturally, she would trust the scientific books her parents gave her as soon as she was mature enough to read them. She had the privilege not to believe in magic. He, on the other hand, didn’t. All of these stories about the mighty dragons and the fierce sea monsters, the stunning princesses and the gentle princes, the castles made of the sweetest candy and the rivers of pure gold were his only escape. In fact, he wasn’t exactly working down there, was he? Right, no child needs to work at that age. He was doing… something else. Anything else in the world, but working… Come to think of it, he wasn’t actually washing the ore in the quarry, he was searching for some magical stones. Yes, yes, now he remembered. The stones he would later on collect into the only beautiful tiny paper box he had just to give it to the boy he planned a play date with. What was his name again? To his surprise, Silco couldn’t remember. Funny, how back then it felt like the biggest crush in the world. Like they would actually spend an eternity together, trading fancy stones and playing with a toy cat that his mother made out of an old dress of hers. This boy’s name, now forever lost, was just a drop of water in the giant sea of oblivion below him. Silco opened his eye, lowering his arms and looking down with a blank stare. Inhaling the poison of the air once again, he sat down on the cold stone of the cliff, letting his feet, tired of running and hiding, dangle over the edge. With all of the layers of clothing he had on, he still felt completely naked. This was the moment he awaited. The one he didn’t plan, yet the one he knew had to come. Parental acceptance. That’s what he was here for. Something he didn’t get a chance to feel, to live through. His teenagehood was lost in the basement of the Last Drop, where no one cared the way he wanted them to care. They did coddle him, Vander, Ethan, Toby… but it wasn’t enough. For Silco it was never enough. He cleaned his throat, taking a moment to listen to the echo of his own voice. Deep, like his father’s. — Mom? Dad? He took a pause. As if someone would actually answer. — I am… my… it's your dau… no, no, give me a second — he desperately tried to find the proper words as millions of thoughts were running through his head, making it burst into pieces, — how… How have you been, huh? I mean… He squinted, hitting his fist on the thigh. Why even beat around the bush? He made it down here, fighting his rage, trying to break through all of this madness, the walls that he himself has built around him. It was time. It was time to let go. In this intimate and divine moment. To feel the searing power of verity in the sacredness of the forgotten quarry. And he was ready. With his only eye filled with determination, completely calm, he finally uttered the words he wanted to say oh so long ago: — Mom, Dad, it’s me. My name is Silco. I’m… I’m your son. ⠀ ⠀