The First Myth

There are three kinds of silence in a world that has forgotten its own name. The first belongs to the cities: the hollow where traffic used to breathe, where millions of small sounds once filled the air like furniture filling a room. That silence came on a Tuesday, when the sky changed, and the world stopped making sense. The second silence belongs to the people who survived it. They learned quickly that sound attracts things. That light draws darkness the way a lantern draws moths, only the moths here have teeth and no name yet. The third silence: the deepest one, the one that has weight and grain like old wood, that one belongs to a man with a battered notebook and eyes that see too much. He is not a hero in any shape the old stories would recognize. He is noting but a simple man in a world that no longer obeys. But he is writing it down anyway. His name is Gray. And with his notebook he'll try not to let the world end a second time.