Prologue.

We all seem to have at least one foggy memory, that lingers within the back of our minds like an unopened book. From our earliest years, ones embedded so deep in the past, that we have forgotten most the details. Yet the colours and connections to the memory remain, as a sort of cruel nostalgia, reminding us of how things used to feel.

I have many of these memories. All are faded, and fragmented, like torn pages and worn-out ink. Sometimes, I have so little left of them, that I question whether they had happened at all. Who knows – perhaps they had only been from some lucid dream which I had mistaken for reality? Indeed, our senses are always deceiving us… and our memory is fragile, and bendable, like molten rock or wet clay. In the end, I can only come to but one conclusion:

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I do not remember what happened that night.

There was red and orange; blue and purple. A firestorm as high as the trees, bright and furious against the cold midnight sky. The light of the stars and the moon quivered beneath its incandescent glow, for it spanned so far, over the foliage and walls of our oakwood cabin.

I faintly recall watching, as the snow melted away beneath my feet. How the bitter cold became the bitter heat; burning and biting, until there was nothing left but the scent of smoke. Smoke, ashes, charcoal and dust… and within them, the feather of a crow, buried beneath the remains of my home.

“Do not grieve, for this is predestined,” I heard the crow call.

“It is predestined for all things.”