"Y'know, one of the first things we tell the newbies is how many lives are lost on the mission." A tall and husky voiced woman says, standing in front of a simple grey headstone. "But the one thing few of 'em really get, is that their old lives are the first casualty."
She takes a long drag of a cigarette, and lets the smoke drift to the stars above on a rare, clear October night. Those same stars watch the myriad play across the region, the many streets of Tacoma, Seattle, and all in-between.
Somewhere in a small office, a man who traded his humanity for power smells someone cooking dinner, something savory and rich with spice. For a moment he pauses his schemes, and wonders if he can remember the taste of his mother's cooking. If he can remember her face.
Across the city in a small restaurant, a 'widowed' mother and her daughter talk excitedly about her first weeks in high school. She has already made new friends, and gets on with her teachers well at this new school. At one point, she muses that she wishes her father was still around, the scar still fresh, and her mother feels the same but lets her know that he'll always be with her. They don't know, couldn't possibly know, that his mutated and misshapen new form was at the booth behind them, stifling bloody tears.
Up in Seattle a group of 30-somethings playing at true maturity let loose with a tame bar crawl, cheering and reliving their youthful years, lamenting the absence of one dear friend. They haven't heard from her in quite some time, and wonder if she's okay. Somewhere nearby, she can faintly hear their wishes and knows their hearts are true, but her First Change exposed so much of the rot beneath what they drank, where they walked, and what their work actually did, and she can't allow herself to be free anymore.
Far from the urban sprawl, in deep woods, a true wolf pads through the brush following a familiar scent. It is trying so hard to understand everything new, including the fact that it even can understand so much now, but it needs familiarity. Finally, it finds who it was looking for. Mother, family, home. It droops its head and tucks its tail and tries to get closer, but even one step causes the matron to snarl. The wolf tries to yip out an explanation, proof that its still her child, but she cannot except it. No child of hers would smell of metal and chemicals and such disgusting blood. In shame, the wolf runs.
In a barren studio apartment a recently hired technological agent goes about his routine, brushing his teeth and washing his face. As he winds down, he thinks that it's been a while since he's tried to write anything, and opens his laptop. But as he sits, and sits, and sits, he can't make anything come to mind. Procedures, regulations, limitations, formulae, those are the only things his mind can conjure up. He was never the most creative of his family, full of artists of all stripes, but he looks back on all he had written before and feels the emotion in each word. Where has that all gone?
Two floors down, a college student begins to break down. They see reality for all it is, so fragile and malleable but imprisoning all the same. To them, now opened to the cosmos, all the world is ants and they too are an ant under an eternally looming heel of Damocles. In every nursery rhyme they hear secrets of the void, in every handshake a life-long pact, in every motion a swarm of butterflies creating Armageddon in infinite ways. So, they lie motionless on the floor barely even wishing to cry yet unable to stop themselves either, thinking back to when life was so simple they could believe all would be alright.
To normal eyes, a run-down bar. To others, a fantasy tavern full of fairy lights. In this other world, other view so near yet far, a young girl dances her woes away with satyr legs. She awoke from her cocoon of normalcy a month ago and has barely stopped dancing since. She is free, she is whole, she is herself, and so she cares not of the world. Her parents are scared, she's ignoring their calls and has been skipping classes more and more, but she wants nothing to do with them. They'd merely call her psychotic or manic or whatever new word they found and force medicine on her, medicine that made her dull and boring and inert before this beautiful change. And so, she will dance until she can't anymore.
Watching the spirited youth twirl is a much older and jaded woman, who used to dance much like the youth does. But she is the last of her old guard, the rest of them having turned to the grey banality they all fear, something far worse than death. Oh what adventures they used to have, slaying dragons and playing games, pranking royals and finding lost secrets. All of that was gone now, and worth its weight in dust. Her own time will be soon, she knows, and just hopes that it'll be painless, so her human half will be okay.
Elsewhere, far from any living revelry, a lone spirit looms over a small rambler in the southern part of Tacoma. He doesn't remember his name, his face, what he used to be, but he remembers home. As the current tenants hang up orange and purple string lights, he remembers doing much the same. His family decorating the lawn with skeletons, and pumpkins, and all manner of spooky materials for the season. What he wouldn't give to remember the name they'd say as his wife and daughter would laugh and dance amidst autumn leaves. He matches gazes with the neighborhood stray, a gentle pitbull who must be the pup of the old girl he remembers, but the dog doesn't bark to drive him away. Even hounds must know what mourning looks like.
And within the simulated glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the constructed safe harbor within the other side of the veil for the region, an old dog of a man sips a bitter drink of memories as his own play on a film reel in front of him. Almost all of them are fights with his father, the one thing he can remember clearest, but each comes with the aftertaste of sorrow, regret, appreciation, understanding, a nostalgia for the sharp and blunt yet caring man who was consumed by the weakness of age far too soon. He can't remember if he went the same way his father did, but it didn't matter now. He left the complex human behind, and the simple character of a washed up bruiser is all that remains, save for between swigs.
A myriad of stories live in these streets. Fragments long cast from the stars still look up and hope to return, beasts of all stripes dream of a world long past them, mortals torn between one side and another without knowing regret what they have seen, and so many more.
"Truth is," The gruff woman continues to lament to the grave, "We all fear the world ending, but it ends every night, and each day the world gets back up and tries again. To look back, to stay stuck, just kills us alongside that part of the past. 'Course, not all of us get much of a choice." She lights another cigarette, and places it on the headstone before walking back into the night, until the next end of the world.
