The Zodiacs

53. Kaboos Ending

^^ Zahra & Omari 

Omari's breath refused to fall under his control as he raced forward, his feet slamming into the ground beneath him with a newfound strength that propelled the young boy's movement. His eyes were wide, sweat dripping down his temple and onto the muddy ground in terror.

He needed to save them.

He couldn't let them die just as they had hundreds of times before. If only he could run a little faster, take enough back streets, avoid the crowds, do anything at all to reach his mother a little faster.

But nothing ever seemed to work. No matter how much he altered his way home or increased his speed until his legs were burning with the screams to slow and rest, he could never save the two women he loved.

Every single time, he reached his neighborhood, the streets were already flooded with the rivers of blood that were slowly draining into the sewer openings. The mud squished with the life that once flooded the dark, silent streets. Now, they were filled with only sparse weeping and the sound of the lightly blowing wind to remind him that life would go on with or without the lady who'd raised him.

Again, he would stare into her lifeless eyes and sob at her side as he pulled his mother's limp body into him, craving the warmth that was beginning to leave her body. She would never be warm again. His mother was gone no matter how much he tried to pretend she wasn't; all that lay in front of him was the vessel of muscle and bone that once housed her bright soul.

That's all they'd all become... empty bodies, but a body was nothing without the soul that emitted its unique personality just like a door was useless without a key to open. Their souls had been the key... the beautiful, golden, one-of-a-kind key.

Mother.

Asiya.

Still, no matter what he did, they always died. Omari failed again, and again, and again. But everytime it began again --the nightmare he was barely surviving through --the boy raced across the town like he could change the outcome because, even if the chance was less than one in a hundred, he would still try until they weren't gone... like a fool.

He'd bring them back. Because they were all he had in this life, and there was nothing without either of the two.

"Watch-," Omari tried to cry out when a shadow suddenly appeared in his path. He was going too fast to stop. The word barely made its way through his lips, his feet sliding against the loose mud, before he slammed into the shorter figure with enough force to throw them both forward. "No!" He cried out, already fumbling to get up before he'd even met the wet ground.

The boy slipped, only covering himself in more thick dirt as he tried to lift himself from the ground. There was no time to waste. He cursed when his hands failed to gain enough traction to lift himself up. But, as soon as he gained the required amount of his balance, Omari lifted himself off the ground and continued forward.

"Watch it!" The girl behind him shouted at the boy's back angrily, clearly not appreciating what his rush had done to her. "The world isn't ending for you to run like that, doofus."

But his footsteps slid to a stop at the unfamiliar memories that built into his mind with the sound of her voice. The young boy's eyebrows drew together when he turned to meet the stranger's brown eyes and dirty blonde hair; she wasn't much of a stranger though... was she? "Seven?" He whispered, stepping back toward her.

The blonde raised her eyebrows at what he'd just called her. "Seven?" She repeated in question. "You run into me and ruin my clothes, and then call me a number like some type of slave? You're not from around here, are you, boy?"