Radio Death

04.

It was almost as if Nora could feel the brittle road underneath her and hear the ringing cracks of the gravel.

The others. The others were far too occupied emitting faint groans, murmuring complaints of the particular road's consequences. Their shaky fingers didn't punch the right words on their touchscreen, their shaky minds didn't feel what Nora could feel.

They refused to feel Nora's smiles, all caused by the rhythmic friction of the path, the crisp tune of Arden's tales and tunes. She would tug on the strings of her sturdy earphones and they would gently, nearly swim off the shore of her ear. But, the fighters clutched on and continued to pour out the whirlwind of ingredients fed into them. Nora let them, until the ingredients could no longer reach her.

And then she clutched on and pushed them right back in. Just to remind her ears how much they loved to embrace the flavours.

"I don't know about your view, but mine is delivering a full moon that's making me happy. Making the sky happy. It's funny how this supposed small and beautifully flawed object can brighten this dark, imperishable blanket."

Before Arden's words pointed it out, Nora's own pair of vision spheres glazed at the sight of the sphere so different, hanging in the night sky. The invisible thread that let it hang, also let it float smooth and then still in this ocean of rhapsody. Its presence developed ripples in the ocean; brighter and brighter moonlight. The underwater sheltered the scene Nora and the moon looked to. 

A black and what seemed like to be a sempiternal roadside is what existed. Nora was curious.

It exasperated her, the fact that she couldn't have a glimpse of what there really was. If only it was day.

'We always want more, don't we?' Nora thought.

And so she decided to satisfy herself with what she had- imagination. Nora imagined a throng of scenic valuables swarming the present-dark. Lakes patiently waiting to be shimmered upon by the future sun, trees swaying to their own melody and earthworms straining to get a bit of moonlight, even where it never reached. A tad bit of a selfish that moon was, really. Helping the heavens, but never the underground.

Nora sighed. That had almost satisfied her, temporarily at least. She could always construct different valuables interwoven deep in the darkness, once this feeling faded. Nora was sure she would be curious again.

Turns out, the moon was curious too.

A handful of its glow settled upon the reality. Nora couldn't help but feel disappointed, on a scale only smaller than the beauty of the scene her mind had offered. Reality was glutted with the opposite, but now she knew she wouldn't have to live with the guilt of offering negative and receiving positive. She could live with this; offering positivity and receiving its stark enemy.

She couldn't quite figure out if the lakes were there, or if the earthworms were there. But there sure was something, the gift of a deed done in the past. A deed of greed and no mercy.

There were viciously torn apart tree stumps,

                                                                   living the appalling afterlife.