I can die with that

Can you believe it? 

It just slipped in. I thought...I thought we were tougher. Risen from the ashes of ancestors that have seen a million suns dip beneath the horizon. 

My skin, calloused and weathered by those years spent shielding myself from the harsh winds blowing from the western plains. I had imagined it as an armour. Yet how with such little force the blade eased in, reminding me of the early days when my feet disappeared into the heaps of black snow on the northern mountains. I would look down at my foot, a sunken spirit in the wasteland. 

Now all that remains is the hilt that erupts from my chest. Red lava slithering down and pooling beneath me. 

I manage to lift my head and gaze with bewildered awe at the mushroom clouds dotting the horizon. Peer down the rock face, stare at the broken body of the boy I killed. I caught him stealing from me. He tried to take all that I had left of her, the only thing I tried to save at the beginning when the white flashes filled my room.

I yelled. Grabbed. 

He slipped. 

The valley beneath absorbed the waves of sound that carried his last guttural scream, bounced them off mountain walls so that they should seep into my heart. 

Then he stood before me, the Father. Lips curled, eyes wide. Hand flashed to the hip.

So quick.

As my last sun darkens before me I am peaceful in the knowledge that I would have done the same as him. 

I can die with that.