Among Us

Part Two- A Decaying Beauty

The yellow leaves swirled around me like butterflies, folding and swooshing in the sweet-smelling air. The trees were like fish scales, reflecting the sun in an ombre of warm colors as the wind rustled through their leaves.

A guy sat beside me, loosening my chains softly. 

His name was Dean, and he was probably the only friend I had here. He's a Guard, perhaps one of the highest-ranked, but hours and hours of talking through cell bars and useless interrogation had left a strange friendship behind. 

(author here. Please. Spare me. This character was supposed to have like five chapters of introduction. I won't be able to do the full next book, so I have to introduce him rn and pretend that's enough background. Like I said. Spare me.)

I smiled at him, and he smiled back, before straightening and turning his eyes back at the sky. Their emerald hue shined gold with the sunlight, almost matching his soft yellow hair. 

"It's strange, isn't it?" He whispered from beside me. "How such beauty can come from death."

A small bird chirped from the branches. I smiled. They were already releasing them.

"But it grows back," I answered as a small, red leaf brushed my nose. "They do this knowing it will be okay. They know they can come back."

I turned to him. He wasn't looking at me, but had his eyes fixed on the canopy above us. The light illuminated his sharp features with golden spots, like flecks of gold, and doted his eyes with the color, giving him a godly look.

"We don't have such assurance, do we?" He asked. "We will never know what lies beyond."

"Do you think it's something good?" I asked.

He turned to me with a soft smile. "I have many theories. The one that makes sense in my mind is neither good nor bad. I don't think you even exist. You just are. "

"Then again-" He said after a short pause, "There's the theory of reincarnation, which I think is unlikley. There's the theory of Heaven and Hell. The thing with that theory is, who decides what's good and what's bad?"

I nodded. "When someone does something bad, they do it for a reason. So it might be good, it might be bad, it might be both. It just depends what point of view you're seeing their actions through."

He nodded with a smile. "Exactly."

It was like what Jacks had done. I tried not to think about it, but what I had said was true. What he had done, he had done for a reason. To protect the could-be weapons. To protect Planet X. Maybe he thought if people knew, they would think the same as Barracks.

People were like that, after all.

It was in our nature to be the most powerful. Even if it meant destroying what they wanted to rule. Even if it meant fighting their own species.

I glanced back at the trees. I understood, for a split second, what Jacks had thought. We couldn't risk destroying this beautiful planet, too. I watched the trees as their leaves shifting from red to orange to yellow. Some flicked off their brown branches and began to fall lazily downwards, joining the pile of fallen leaves beneath them. Others were swept away, spinning and swirling in the wind like dancers. A few swirled around me, and I managed to snatch one with my hands, even though my wrists where being held together by cuffs made of cold, heavy metal.

"I imagined it as whatever you wanted. Like a dream." I said, letting the leaf go and watch it join the others as they danced away. "The scene just keeps shifting, and it doesn't make sense, yet to you, it does. It just shifts and shifts and shifts. But the more I thought about it, the sadder I grew. Because I know this person is shifting and shifting and shifting. Trying to find the right scene. But it never is. And slowly, they grow so focused on their surroundings, they begin to forget themselves."

"Until the person left is no longer who they used to be." He finished with a nod, crumbling a leaf in his palm and watching it float away. "He loses himself, in the way the dead do."

"Though, I don't think you have to be dead to do that," I said. "I've lost myself the same way."

"No, you haven't." He said, looking at me with a feeling I couldn't recognize. "Jacks was the one who lost himself."

"If he's alive-" I managed, trying not to think about the if. "Do you think he's still lost?"

"I'm sure he is. People like him don't see the problem, they think it's the solution. " He answered. "Like you said, people don't do that kind of thing without reason. Even if it's a messed up reason, it must be straight in their heads. That's why people like him are like the dead. Lost."

I closed my eyes wistfully for a second, yet the light still shone through my eyelids. I was trying to hold back the wave of emotions begging to be released. I swallowed them back and looked at the decaying beauty around me.

"But they aren't dead." He added, a small grin creeping into his face. "So I think there's a way of finding them again."

A bell rings in the distance. 

"Time to go back." I say. But he doesn't move.

"We aren't going back there." He says. 

"What?"

He holds up his key. "You're no longer a prisoner of the Garden."

So much rushes through my head at once that I just... go with it. I hold out my hands, and he inserts the key.

When my chains fall, they don't make a sound.

Neither do our fleeing footsteps. 

The decaying beauty around us is rooting for our escape.

And for a life that hides somewhere in those trees.

Now it's just up to us to find it. 

---

Okay. So here's how it works. 

I promised y'all a resolution, and I hate to be that one author that promises something and delete their account or whatever. 

Y'all showed me so much support. it would be unfair.

Butttttttt there's a lot going on. I currently am preparing to be wicked to a boarding school on the other side of the planet. Yes, that's a personal note. But I need you guys to understand why I won't be able to write a second book.

I am planing on giving the characters closure though. There will be a few more chapters after this one. Maybe just one. But I will try my best to summarize what would have happened in book two. Trust me, it wasn't too much action. Just explaining how a multi-cultural new city would look as it builds itself on a foreign planet. Its a cool concept, and I hope you guys can imagine it as well as I can without twenty chapters of explanation. 

Again, Im so, so sorry. 

Im trying my best to make things work.