top notes: [ note: first person vash pov >> shift ]
the sun is a glowing ball of fire directly on top of your head. the smaller sun circles behind, two thirds of the way covered, some kind of fucked up eclipse that does nothing with the oppressive heat that burns over the surface of the sand; you're surprised that the sand is still sand, soft and grabby beneath your feet, clinging to every nook and cranny. there are no clouds, no cover. you are halfway climbing up a dune, sticky hands gritty where the sand grains are trapped. you feel the grains scraping against the glass-metal joins of your left hand, trapped in the mechanism. god, you'll have to clean that out later. if there is a later. there is a muffled whistle behind you, and then a red flare explodes high above in the air, bright against the cloudless blue of the sky. almost at the same time you hear the rev of motor engines, loud whooping, the sound of bullets whistling (not close enough to hit, but too close). they strike the sand about 10 feet from where you are, cutting in a high arc and closing in. run.

heart notes: [ note: first person vash pov >> shift ]
one minute, you are enjoying your breakfast (fried toma eggs still sizzling on the plate, a piece of stale bread, but it's a feast enough - you feel like you haven't eaten in days, weeks). the only drink you have is water, tinted faint murky brown, like thin watered down beer. it tastes of grit, but can you really afford to be picky? you should maybe have eaten faster, got out of there quicker with your stomach full with food instead of being full (potentially) of lead as bullets whistle past your shoulders as you frantically run through the narrow alleyway, the piles of unswept sand threatening to break your ankles if you're not careful enough, as though dodging bullets isn't enough. there's a little run-off, covered by a rusted over water tank (hollow and empty, a big dry burnt out hole at the base of it) so you hide yourself behind, crouching low. wait, is that blood?

base notes: [ note: w/ interactive vash! ]
there is an eye carved into the sky high above with a hundred thousand (million) blades, undulating in circles multitudinal, catching the last rays of the suns setting in the horizon or maybe it's the fire that breaks out as something shatters, explodes in the distance; a fuel tank? a bomb? you feel the heat burning the top layer of your skin. people screaming, the sound of running feet. the eye constricts, shrinking to a pinprick, whirls around back to its never-ending watch over the pinprick bug like humanity below, a minute blink in time. the massive rocky mountain beneath the eye (above your head) burns with crisscross lines of molten stone, each piece the size of a house, maybe bigger. the tower falls piece by piece.

cool dark void of outer space. you've never seen the earth and you don't know what you're missing. you learn the names of constellations but none of them match up, so you make up new names. the ship is always quiet - everyone asleep behind blue-lit glass. they can't hear you, they're waiting for a new green world, but you always visit anyway. good morning, good morning. you learn their names, every single one of them.

a green tree in the middle of a vast glass dome. a birthday cake. a woman with dark hair, cradling blood red flowers in a climate-controlled vase. in the middle, there's a white flower that you've never seen before - and inside it blooms a blue eye, a severed arm.

the petals scatter and each of them is a ship nestled alongside yours in a close formation in the cold dark void of space. they fall one by one, the implosions shaking through the steel hull. the lights flicker. you cling onto a warm body - don't let them go - but they dissolve into a shower of red flowers. it smells of blood.

a mirror image, a broken mirror, your face reflected back at you through clouded over red glass or maybe that's blood it's hard to tell. blackened and burnt, every single one of them burning inside the water-that-is-not-water (it's all because of the water) that holds them. there are so many. nails against chalkboard cutting through your eardrums. you cannot save them.