The city's air was heavy with the sound of itself.
Some wept, the grief finding its way out in the only direction available to it. Some stood exactly where they had been standing, stunned into a stillness that had nothing to do with calm. Others cursed, loudly and without care for who heard them, the anger needing somewhere to go and choosing the open air.
And some, perhaps the ones who had been closest to the edge of not making it, simply stood with the quiet, fragile relief of people who realized they would live a little longer and had decided, for the moment, that this was enough to hold on to.
'Brother.'
The whisper arrived in Alex's mind with the particular quality of Venedikt's voice when it was not performing anything, stripped of its usual measured precision, carrying only the worry it contained. Calm on its surface and drowning beneath it.
'Are you alright?'
