They both reformed, slowly. There was a point, as the flesh and tissues began covering the bones, that he knew pain again. The transition from a sort of disembodied consciousness, which was something like a dreamless sleep that held only the vaguest awareness of his bones and sinews reforming, into the searing fire that was his recovery, would have produced screams were he able to make any sort of articulation. No, by the time he had lungs and air and throat and mouth, the worst of the pain was over.
He sat up and stretched. The grass tickled his baby-tender skin, and tears fell from his eyes. Laughter or sobs, broke, and he stayed there blubbering for a time before his internal senses came back to him. Memory. Places, people, a fight. Yes, he knew now what had happened. The bomb had gone off. No matter, he hoped. Everyone should have been evacuated except for him andā¦
He got to his feet and took a few wobbling steps before he caught his stride. It was summer, he figured, and though the joys of that season abound, he felt a certain amount of worry. It should be winter. Had he been dead for half a year?
His eyes were distracted by a flittering bird, and so he did not notice the other man, naked as himself, until they were quite close.
“D’oh!” he said, startled. “Got you too?”
“And our clothes,” came the gruff reply.
The new man looked around. There was grass, a few trees, bushes. Insects buzzed, birds chirped, somewhere a stream gurgled. It was a great change from the war ruined city they had been in.
“Where are we?” he finally asked.
“That’s not hard,” answered his companion. “We’re not far from where we died. The question is when.”
“Yeah,” answered the new man. “I mean, it’s summer, I think. So, nearly half a year.”
His companion glared at him.
“Look around you,” he said. “It’s been more than half a year.”
This comment finally made the newly formed man stop and think. He was, to tell the truth, somewhat drunk by the experience of coming back to life.
“Where are we?” he asked again, a cold, sobering chill running down his back.
“This,” said his companion, holding his arms out to the world, “Is your home. The city in which you were born. Nature has conquered and buried the towers and statues. They were as so many sandcastles in the tide.”
“Nancy, Bob, Sheldon,” the names fell from his mouth.
“They weren’t like us,” said his companion.
“No,” growled the newly made man, his hands balling up into fists.
His companion’s face grew stern.
“I told you what it would mean.”
“But, butā¦” he stammered. “I thought I wouldā¦at leastā¦well, be there for them. Watch the slow changes come. Grow wise. We just leapfrogged overā¦” His voice, growing sharper in pitch, embarrassed him for its childlike cry, and he was silent.
“I’ve been here. It happens now and again. Sometimes accident, sometimesā¦and the body is so destroyed it takes ages to come back again.” The other man sighed. “You don’t know how many times I’ve seen the world rise and fall in fire. All things pass, and always, I remain.”
“Nancy,” whispered the new man. “She might haveā¦”
“She didn’t want to be like us.”
“But that would have changed! The two of us would haveā¦what’s the point?” he asked.
“At some point,” cut in the other man, “you have to make peace with yourself. I can’t do it for you. You can either cut yourself off, love nothing, live in that dark house the others do, locked away in your room like a coffin, or you can do what I do, what I’ve chosen; love this fading passing world that you can never be a part of and let it break your heart again and again. I can’t, and I wouldn’t try to, make you choose. In the end, it’s your choice.”
The new man collapsed.
“What am I going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s a new world. I’m going to find some clothes.”
Tale Told 