There was great fury in the froth-wake of morning. A violent light crackled across the night with silent beckoning. It was time. 

And honestly, it had been time.

In fact, the world was overdue happiness, tranquility, the stark company of a shadow. All this time the world was bleached and tainted as faceted suns purged from every crevice. It was like walking on a diamond, this death – and Euphrates feared that he might not ever die.

But now there was rupture. A new light; one that was blessed and glimmering fainter than the rest, was born.

Euphrates cracked open his eggshell eyes at the moment the sky burst beautifully over the beach. The waves revered in their astonishment, and his body resembled a cacophony of rapture, a surface broken. Broken and splashing.

If he could just step into it, feel the presence of the colors dancing, radiating on the ripple caps of his skin. It would be heaven, he decided. It would be that final realization of death. The moment he’d been waiting for this entire time. The ravens would not last in white light, the sand could not ascend the atmosphere, and the memories would remain with his remains in eternal hell where they belonged. This goddamned moment would be the one.

But time still passed in oblique grains. The world was still whole, his perception and ache never dull in the wrought of his purely exhausted heart. The stillness in the air was only opposed by the flame on the horizon, flickering ever forward with every thrum of worsening anticipation. It did not change his desire to die. He had memories still living in him. Haunting him. Nothing could change that.

But something trickled out from the light. A golden river of the warmest glowing fluid ran from the sky and bloomed a fire-flower in the brine. Euphrates craned his gaze over the Flats, wondering if it was God.

Something in the back of his mind was quick to assume so. Quick to break an even sweat out over his calloused hide and thrust his heart into hammering away toward the finish line. Something in there wanted it so badly, but something else deep in his pupil reveled in the complexity of a fallen drop of immortality. And like the realization of a tsunami, Euphrates stood in the peril of his creator. Those last few strides of pulse fell stutteringly short of the line. Everything stopped.

Do I want this?

Of course you do, you fucking idiot.

But do I…not want it?

It was difficult to decide. 

He’d just gained perhaps the most solemnly beautiful experience, the most mystifying altercation of reality. How could you really top that? How could you really top your last memory if it were the face of the asshole that spit you here in the first place? How could you really top this ironic deathbed?

Or birthbed?

Whatever, it was just enough to convince him that this was truly his moment to end it all.

He weakly came to his hooves, sand and other sparkling brine particles clung to his rippling coat. Beneath the slurry that coated him, his colors conjured a swell of emotion, of heartbeat. With the last surge of real energy left within him, Euphrates hurled himself into a gallop. The messiest gait: a flood of uncertainty, reverence, and hatred hurtling into the light with floundered inelegance.

This is it, I’m dying.

Finally, I’m dying!

But he wasn’t. It would never be that easy for him.

He landed crippled in the heap of sunset. His body rocked in rippled arms before they grew slowly to silver stillness. He opened his eyes to find himself standing among few he had ever seen before. Evaneska, the girl he owed much of his life to, was present. And gradually as the surrounding dome of life refocused in his eyes, he understood with great sobriety that this was not death. 

Fuck.

His body peeled a babbling pattern of disgust; sharp, hooked waves furled in their wakes.

He had the urge to say he was sorry. And for what, he didn’t know, but sorry was the only word that ebbed within him. It channeled within him, stayed there for a while.

I’m sorry you didn’t die. I guess I’m sorry I wanted you to die.

He was only sorry because the others didn’t die too. It was selfish to even consider leaving the others, especially Evaneska, alone in life.

There were a few in this new place that promised refuge. But Euphrates did not hear them over the loud guilt that lapped gently at his unreachable shore. 

"I’m so sorry."