A car’s on fire.

It rolled from a hill with no driver at the wheel and ended its journey quickly by courtesy of a concrete wall. Moonbyul watched as flames overtake the vehicle completely, pulverizing what's left of the engine with one last explosion. A quick dead for the poor scrap of metal. She couldn’t help but envy anyway.

It's been a month since enemies had set fire to the city. Or maybe a month and a half. Or was it two? 

Keeping track of time is as hard as finding peaceful sleep nowadays when the sun has fallen down to a perpetual army of smoke. Smoke like soot covering her hands and eyes. Smoke thicker than what she puts in her lungs, that smells of burning grass and charred wood planks and gasoline and singed flesh. There's a darkness that marks all her days. She's beginning to forget what sunlight on a back looks like. 

But at the very least, the skyline is beautiful on fire. Buildings once stood so defiant with glass and stones and structure, now all twisted pieces of metal stretching upwards, like hands holding out to a god in supplication. A thin orange haze washes over Moonbyul, like a cold shower, or a baptism. Flames dancing to the tunes of screaming bodies— inhabitants of said buildings— casting shadows that dances over her skin like a scar she can't remove. 

The fire is spreading.

Moonbyul sipped through a drag of a cigarette, indulged it slowly, then lets go of the smoke in her lungs for it to blend in with the rest. She spits out the filter remaining, checked for the pistol by her side, and does a sharp turn on her motorcycle in the opposite direction.

The road back to Solar gets easier every time. With pathways made simple by billboards all leering with religious jargons and flags all dead at the top of their poles as if to say: “long live the country”. 

She counted six billboards and four flagpoles before stopping the bike at a shed.

Moonbyul is let in quickly with a series of three quick raps at the door following a long pause. It doesn't seem as if Solar's moved at all from her designated spot: facing the door and wielding a shotgun, with a rabbit she'd skinned and is roasting over a fire. They've learned to save words with one another, no other noise between them save for a radio that's only producing static. 

Solar came to her without a past, with only a new name she'd picked up on the way to burying the life she once had.

Oftentimes, Moonbyul thought back to a life before this, back when she was still Byulyi of the Moon family, of a life without fire and bloodshed. She'd let her die with the rest of them, covering up her eyes with dirt for Byulyi to die with those memories. Now she's Moonbyul, hardened by images of lactating mothers digging through the rubbles for their babies to brush their eyelids close.

They were just two people with no pasts nor a future. Even if Moonbyul sometimes finds herself sobbing quietly in her cot to memories that should no longer belong to her. 

There’s a field overlooking a cliff that drops to a freshwater stream all muddied with a thousand bodies.

They are sat smack dab in the middle where the grass are all bone dry and brittle and the bugs have all turned over on themselves to die. Moonbyul looked at her through a different lens and Solar combed through her hair with mutilated fingers. Moonbyul realized then that she had never seen Solar in full colors, without the presence of the fiery hue. 

What would have changed? In the shadows of the fire, Solar's eyes appeared amber and honeyed and warm. There’s a perpetual burning reflected in her eyes every time Moonbyul stared deep enough that made her feel desired in certain ways. Will those desires be gone once the flames around them extinguishes?

These days, Moonbyul finds herself thinking a lot about love when hell is the fire they currently live through. She had a family once who loved her for the sake of it but saw angry soldiers in red take them away, and she had a lover back then who loved her for the time being but they only ever kissed like means to an end. And then she ended up thinking about what Solar could be; someone who loved her for the sake of it, or someone who loved her for the time being. 

But then she said, “kiss me, you're beautiful— these are truly the last days,” and then there was nothing else to say. 

Moonbyul laughed, all carefree like the days of innocence but suddenly hands were cradling her as if she was without sins and for a brief, brief flash of a moment, Moonbyul believed her. 

Lips draw them closer than they'd ever been. She swallowed her tongue and it tasted of an ending but Moonbyul could say then that she'd seen desire in its true colors.

The end is really here.

The enemies are near again. Now the screams are getting closer, their torches are looming and it's impossibly bright.

The fire had eaten everything in its paths, including the blades of brittle grass surrounding them, surely making its way to claim the last of the victims.

The field overlooked a cliff that drops to a freshwater stream all muddied with a thousand bodies. Solar grabs onto her hand tightly and she smiles with a mouth that's full of blood.

And they fall into it. Like a daydream. Or a fever.

_______
 

made a few edits bc it was 2am when i uploaded this and accidentally uploaded the entire thing into the foreword page 😭. this sub-1k work was written in like a week. which... will be a problem for me when finishing this longer project im working on