Narrated by Vedek Lira
Loss was. Loss is. Loss will be.
When the fires dimmed and the guns fell silent, the quiet was not peace — it was absence. Homes stood gutted, roads cracked, cities hollow. But the deepest scars were not in the land. They were in the children.
They wandered in packs, barefoot and hungry, clutching scraps of bread and each other’s hands. The adults had been claimed by the wars; the little ones learned to hide their cries.
And watching from the shimmer between worlds was Ilios of the Thasians — the being who had once made a child into a god.
The Keeper’s Memory
Ilios did not walk so much as hover through memory. His form flickered in the dying light of streetlamps, his voice a whisper only the kind could hear.
He had known a boy like these once — Charlie Evans, the child who had survived the destruction of the Antares. Ilios had saved him, teaching him to shape thought into matter, loneliness into creation. But the boy’s mind had been too young, his heart too desperate. What Ilios had meant as salvation became a curse.
Now Ilios drifted over a broken schoolhouse, haunted by that mistake.
The Children
The classroom was half-collapsed, its roof open to the ash-gray sky. A dozen children huddled around a small pot of thin soup, pages of burned books glowing in their fire.
Then, the air warmed. A shimmer formed. A gentle face appeared in the light.
“Do not fear,” whispered Ilios. “I see you.”
A small boy stepped forward, fists clenched, eyes bright with defiance.
“Are you an angel? Mama said angels would come.”
Ilios smiled — sadly.
“I am no angel. I am… a keeper. Tell me, what would you do if you had the power to change this world?”
The boy answered without hesitation.
“I’d make it safe. I’d make food come back. I’d make the men with guns go away.”
A little girl lifted her head.
“I’d bring Mama back.”
Another whispered, “I’d make it stop raining ashes.”
Their dreams were pure — and fragile. Ilios trembled. For he remembered Charlie Evans, who had once asked for love and instead learned to bend reality.
The Decision
The air shimmered brighter. The children leaned close, waiting for miracles.
“You are strong already,” Ilios said softly. “Stronger than you know. But power without wisdom is a fire that burns the one who holds it.”
He knelt — or seemed to — and touched the cracked floor. From the dust, green shoots burst upward. Vines climbed the walls. Beans twined around bent metal. Tomatoes ripened in the cold air.
The children gasped. Their hunger quieted.
“Why not make us powerful?” the boy asked.
“Because it would crush you,” Ilios answered. “One day, perhaps… but not today.”
Vedek Lira’s Closing
Compassion without indulgence. Mercy without recklessness. That was Ilios’s gift.
He did not make them gods. He made them gardeners.
When he faded into starlight, the children did not weep. They gathered the food. They shared it. And under the watchful glow of Earth’s orbiting rainforest station, they began to plant again — tiny hands shaping a future from ruin.
TheWRITEaddiction.com 
Leave a reply to Anonymous Cancel reply