My father bought a gun for him and another one for my mother. It is unusual in our village to own a firearm and it used to be frowned upon.  Yet we must prepare because this World has become strange! *The times they are a changin'* is playing on the radio in the living room where we nowadays sleep together. We just woke up to the morning light.

My father is showing affection to my mother. That also is unusual and perhaps he finally understands that we can't cower forever. I want to go. My mother wants to go too. It's been a month now that this World doesn't want us anymore. Everything that we eat tastes salty. The water that we drink makes us cry and pissing it burns like torture. The people around us care less and less.

My father freezes and I can't look away. I feel a straightforward pressure in my brain. My father is still frozen and I can't move at all, can't move to take a look toward my mother. The muscles do not respond and it makes me wonder how I can even have thoughts at this moment. The light from the window behind my father is as strong as ever and I can see the leaves from a nearby tree. The leaves have a carefree float for themselves and it is evident that they care not for what we experience right now in this room. Somehow they move when I can't breath and I can't move my eyes away. Another song on the radio later and nothing has changed, it feels like an eternity.

Looking at my father and the window behind him is the only connection between myself and the world. The universe seems to allow nothing else. Just as I was beginning to wish for it to end, this connection slowly fades. My father becomes blurry and I can't see the nonchalant float of the leaves anymore. This is DEATH, I know. Perhaps I could not move a single muscle, but the cells of my body finally lacked nutriments and oxygen. Everything fades to black and I open my eyes, somehow.. elsewhere.

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I’m nervous and exalted because suddenly there’s more to all this, when I believed it was the end of everything. The prior month has been a torture. I should be 17 years old, but I feel like an old man at this point. The intense suffering definitely aged me. In this stream of thoughts, my mother and father probably feel like they are corpses now.

In this new place, there is only my consciousness and the new void. I’m here without a body. There’s just empty black all around me.. and a tablet. As soon as I take notice of the tablet, my body emerges from nothingness and I’m alive. My mouth has a breath and my legs stand the pressure. The tablet gives a sentient feel and it goes away in a floaty way that reminds me of the leaves earlier. There is sand everywhere at this point and perhaps the sand exists now that I have legs to walk upon it. The tablet looks colossal and the level sands stretch far away. In a will to survive, my legs bring me to a run toward the tablet and hands make a grab a it. The tablet lets me read it and it goes as follow :

*Around the decay of your World, do not despair. The Works do not end. You will keep on living, as soon as you sacrifice. If you sacrifice enough, you’ll be born again. If you sacrifice enough more, you’ll be born strong, ye Mighty*