(Traduction française : ici)Kassia dies. And wakes up.
She sees that she doesn’t see anything. The old woman sit there for a while, waiting for the light to come back. The light comes back.
She realizes that she is in a very strange place, for it is the place she has always known was her home. There are bodies, but there is nobody. Only living people, no dead ones that she can feel.
She feels like she doesn’t feel anything. She tries to touch the wind, but it is empty and feels like air. She doesn’t really remember how wind feels anyway.
She remembers that she doesn’t remember anything. She wanders a little in the streets, searching for a noise.
She turns around as she hears a very loud silence. It is the sound of the sea, she knows. Does she really know ?
She tries to scream to fill the silence, and run toward the sea.
When she reaches it, she fills her inner void with salted water. She swallows the water until she can touch the bottom of the world no more. The water is bitter. She tries to bite the water, but she only make it sweet.
She is sweating water in the void now. The world fills quickly. She is afraid.
She smells the trunk of a spruce tree, growing in the void. She climbs it with her hands and feet. When she reaches the top, there is a bird waiting for her. It is a bird with no feathers. Its feathers are colorless.
She sees the bird wink at her. The bird’s shop is open to dead people, it says. She trades her colors against the bird’s feathers that are not there, but may very well appear before the beginning.
They wait at the top of the tree, the bird chearing her with its colors. They start to taste the beginning, but it is not quite there yet. She is afraid that she may soon be alive again and that the bird will not follow her.
As the water reaches the treetop, she lets the bird climb in her mouth. She takes off and her blood starts warming, and her feathers start growing, and her beak starts getting sharper. The bird is not in her mouth. It has flown in another story.
The old woman is now young and she is flying faster and faster. She knows that the time is near over. She flies toward the bright black night, where the Time is hiding.
The end is now racing toward the beginning, eating the story, parts after parts. The words that remains are arguing, fighting to be the last. They don’t pay attention to the woman.
Their battle stops as she catches the Time.
