4338.206 · July 25, 2018 AD
No Time to Anchor To
Night watch is easy when you're fresh. When your body isn't a catalogue of burns and bruises, when your mind isn't spiralling through faces you may never see again, when the sky offers familiar constellations to mark the hours. Paul has none of these luxuries. Just a fire that must not die, a darkness that remembers what happened last time, and eyelids turning to lead whilst something that might be exhaustion — or might be something else — presses down.
There is no clock in Clivilius. No moon to track, no stars to wheel overhead, no way to measure the interminable stretch of hours except by counting your own breaths and hoping you don't lose count. Paul sits by the fire because the fire is the only thing standing between their fragile settlement and whatever waits in the absolute dark beyond its reach.
His thoughts spiral without permission — to Claire's face in the early years before distance grew between them, to children who don't know where Daddy went, to all the comfortable nights he wasted complaining about trivial things. He checks on Jamie, sedated and guarded by dogs more loyal than circumstances deserve, then returns to feed the flames with defiance he doesn't quite feel.
The sky presses down like a lid. Exhaustion becomes a physical opponent, a weight on his chest, a heaviness in his eyelids that no amount of willpower seems to counter. The mantra fragments in his mind, words breaking apart like ice cracking under pressure.
I have to stay awake.
I... must... stay...
The darkness waits. It remembers what happened when the fire died.
