The sky is stained with blood, and the clouds have grown faces.

Familiar faces. Faces I recognized. Twisting and interlocking
with one another and, as a whole, smiling down at us. Encircling gaping holes
through which something was desperately trying to claw its way through.
Something that, too, I felt as though I had seen before.

But, as though I saw nothing unusual, I moped.
Back and forth along the ocean shore, for that was what brought me peace.
Walking along rock, but only truly moving across my own thoughts.
A long, droning speech never made, and yet the sea listened contentedly.

But my audience reflected the sky, and so it reddened.
It reddened, it smiled, and it stopped listening. And with that,
I was made to once again be attentive to that which I walked upon.
As though the faces above had been waiting just for this, they spoke.

"You forgot about us."
"We thought you'd never pay us another glance."
"And for that, look how it's ended up!"

I stopped in my tracks, and it was now I who was the listener.
The faces' smiles disappeared, turning into frowns, and then
distraught scowls as the gaping wounds they encircled retracted
and expanded. I had no response, but the words cut deep.
Ticks of thought that saw fit to suck away at my very being.

But it was true. I had, in a sense, forgotten. Ideas are fluid,
ephemeral things. And each face symbolized a distinctly
different idea of a distinctly different day. I
remembered them as entities, but their presence.
Their unseen visage. That, I had forgotten.
These were faces not of people, but
of my story's wilting chapters.

In a way, I felt guilt. But, really, what I felt more of
was a sense of loss. For I only now remembered what those
faces had given to me, and in turn, what I no longer had.
Was I being projected upon, in feeling this way? Or, perhaps,
I had been truly inundated with a backlog of longing,
all in that one moment. Even still, the faces spoke one more.

"It hurt so much, you know."
"We never forgot. We'll never forget."
"We're going to cry."

Their eyes began to well up, and I came to feel weaker and weaker.
The world around me felt as though it became hotter, and as though
my very blood was escaping my body through my skin. Such that,
in mere minutes, I should have been but a corpse. But I could see.
I could feel. Though I couldn't move any longer. Even when
it came to cool off, such remained the case,
as the sky's red became redder, and
the air became thick and unbreathable.

I felt, for a moment, that I was remembering much of what I
had forgotten. That so much of what those faces represented
was rushing back to me. Hours, days, months of emotion spilling
forth and filling the very air around me. Whatever I saw,
so too did the monster behind the skies,
as it withdrew into the dark, leaving
holy sigils in its absence.

And then, they cried. They screamed, and they sobbed.
A downpour of thick, viscous blood came crashing down upon the shore,
the town I resided in, perhaps the entire world over. The sea rose
and became twice overfilled in a matter of only minutes more.
Reality, normalcy itself was bent by the ceaseless flood.
And still, I felt. I saw. And I remained exactly where I was.
I couldn't breathe, but so too, I couldn't die.

We're drowning.
We're drowning.

My body rose, but never quite to the surface of the blooded sea of tears.
My lungs filled with memories, and I saw nothing but red, the sillhouettes
of those damned faces, and the torn-apart shreds of the world I had known.
But soon, it was all replaced by only those same recollections
as my eyes came to fail me. I was being taken someplace else.
Not a new life, but a life I had lived once before.

"You should talk to us again."
"You should sing our songs again."
"You should live once again."

I was reminded of a long, enjoyably sleepless night.
One spent discovering the soul. Those same holy sigils
decorating my every sight, and teaching me creation. Shifting
sands, shifting skies, a shifting moon's seven prayers.
Zvs vuzla zljavs.

And another, where I looked upon dreams of somebody special.
Somebody who, for quite a long time, has embodied my world
in a form most pure. Somebody who helped facilitate my discovery,
even to the point of borrowing a fragment of their name.
Somebody who, even now, rests next to me
in a softer sort of form.

And one more, a night spent discovering atrocity. Reflexively offering myself
to the Scarlet Rose. Tails of fire adorning a burning smile.
That which lets one escape a nightmare of mundanity and cyclicality.
You smiled, so I will smile too. And so it shreds.
Infernal hellfire is the warmth of this smile.

But now, with these memories so vivid, did I remain in the newly reborn sea?
Were the faces still sobbing? And what of the monster, pray tell?
Surely, they weren't contented so easily.

But I could no longer feel their outside presence. It felt
as though the rain had stopped, leaving only a submerged, dark,
and crimson desert, below a sky of returning grins.

"You have responsibilities to tend to."
"We're still counting on you."
"Swim through this sea, and beach upon an island of graven dreams."

And with that final word uttered, my eyes opened once again,
as I laid across the pristine shore. The blue tide receding,
waiting to listen once more, reflecting an azure, faceless sky.

I pulled myself up, and took another step upon shoreline rock.