The book

The Descent

The descent

- What is it that you want? You keep on crying with dried out tears that never leave your eyes. Like a husk that can't think or feel for himself and needs to copy what others do to even start to understand what an emotion is. -The young boy whined to himself as he tried to carry on with his sleep. – What is it that you want? You'll feel the curse crawl from the darkness of the Abyss, you'll feel it as it becomes a part of you, as you become a part of the curse. And then? Then you'll keep on descending, persistent, reckless like the others, dead, like the others. Because remember, you're not more than a soul on a sea of corpses that are wandering around this hole, even if the ship of your soul takes a long time to sink, when it does, there won't be a shipwreck but rather a dust of what could have been a happy ending.

He woke up. In the middle of the forest. The winds brutally moved the leaves of the trees, making them fall over him like a green rain. That wasn't the first time that he had seen that landscape, that tropical rainforest was never of his liking, it was too dangerous but simultaneously too silent for his taste, it gave him a feeling of uneasiness. Although he loved to look at the views.

He didn't remember that much. The more he tried to remember why he was there the more he forgot.
Loris had Lilith's book in hand, and was all the time reading, even after a few days of being in the second layer moving like a nomad he hadn't lost his passion for the contents of that book. The thing that fascinated him the most was the way it was written, it was like reading an experiment, with the observations of the experiments, and the thoughts of the scientist.

But there was one more thing that captivated him about that book and it was those pages that were almost like diary pieces, diary pieces that got lost in between that science experiment Lilith did, it made every single word inside that thing that much more real for him, giving him the feeling of reality so many of the books on the surfaced lacked, that feeling that made him realize that those words were written by a human being, one with feelings, fears, and dreams, even if those fears and dreams were always the same, the Abyss.

"I don't know what day it is. Jordan was sick we were unable to keep our paste, we're staying in a cave now, in the third layer.

I don't remember having a feeling like this before, I don't even know if I can explain what that feeling is, but, I can explain how that feeling feels like. Do you ever stand on the border of the Abyss and look down? Just... Stand there and investigate infinity, as the birds fly over the clouds and you see their nests on the first layer? We have all done that, haven't we? The feeling I have right now is the same feeling you get when you do that, the one that screams you to jump down and let your body hit the ground, because dying is nothing if you die inside the Abyss, because you've been hearing that same voice every second of your meaningless life and you just want it to stop and you know I'll stop when you're dead.

I wanted to leave Jordan behind. He's a strong man and I know he would survive without me, furthermore, he is delaying my descent and he knows it.

The only reason I stayed with him was that without the sound of his voice I wouldn't stop writing, I need him to detain me when it's too much."

Loris sometimes perceived Lilith's words as if they were written by him, they felt so familiar, so close.

He put the book back in his backpack and started walking in tranquility. He didn't remember the last time he went to the Observation camp, but he knew where it was located. At first, he feared the idea of getting caught by someone in the Observation camp and getting throwback to the surface, but as the time passed by, he cared less and less about the outcome of his "adventure."