Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 20: What We Bury

Unto a Golden Dawn – Dossier 20: What We Bury

Filed under: heart-held time signatures; joy, fear, and the breath between them.

Scene 1 – The Vow

The sky was overcast, but not heavy. The kind of cloud cover that made colors richer.

They stood outside, under a pale canopy in a clearing surrounded by oaks. It smelled of rain and soil and a thousand unsaid things.

The grass beneath their feet was damp. Not muddy—just alive.

Lindsay’s dress wasn’t elaborate, but it moved like water in a breeze. Her perfume—jasmine and something warm—cut through the morning air.

The boy, older now, wore a black suit that hadn’t been tailored. The collar pinched, and sweat beaded along the back of his neck.

She smiled at him like she already forgave him for the things he hadn’t done yet.

When he took her hand, his fingers trembled, but she didn’t flinch.

His voice cracked on the third vow. He saw Dayna in his peripheral memory—laughing from a hallway long ago. He felt Kate like a shadow across the future.

But this? This was a promise said out loud. It echoed like something ancient and necessary.

Even God lowered his head. Tesla closed his eyes, and Clara pressed her fingers against her lips like a prayer she didn’t believe in yet.

Scene 2 – The Birth

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Pale green walls. An old analog clock ticked above the door.

The boy—now a man—sat beside Lindsay, holding her hand as she crushed his fingers.

The air was cold and dry. Machines blinked and beeped, painting the room in rhythm.

The smell of antiseptic clung to everything—sharp, metallic, clean in a way that felt sterile, not safe.

Her screams rose and fell like tide. His heart kept pace without his permission.

And then—

A gasp. Then a cry. Wet. Shrill. Alive.

A nurse handed him the baby wrapped in something sky blue. The weight startled him. Not from mass, but from meaning.

He counted the fingers. Watched the chest rise and fall. The baby blinked up at him and scowled. It was the most honest thing he’d ever seen.

He cried, quietly, holding his son in a room full of blinking lights and humming machines.

Buddha exhaled a prayer in Sanskrit. Tesla, standing against the wall, whispered, ‘This is why he came back.’

Scene 3 – The Collapse

A hot afternoon. Summer cicadas screamed in the distance.

He walked out of a store—keys in hand, phone in pocket—and the world narrowed.

It started like a cramp. Then a squeezing. Then fire.

The boy’s knees hit the asphalt hard. The sun above him flickered.

Breath vanished. Chest locked. Every nerve turned to static.

Somewhere, someone shouted. Tires screeched. A phone dialed itself.

His face pressed against the parking lot gravel. He smelled oil and tar and old gum.

He thought about his son. Not just in the abstract—but as a tether. A reason.

The gods watched from the sky above him—useless, still. Tesla turned away. Clara knelt, whispering, ‘Not yet. Not now.’

His eyes rolled back.

Then light. Then shadow. Then breath.

He woke up inside a memory of himself and found he was still here.

No one applauded. No one spoke. But the Host blinked—for the first time in a long time.

Scene 4 – Echoes in the Wastelands

The boy—Frank—was not gone. He was scattered.

Pieces of him echoed through the Wastelands like signals bouncing off broken stars. Caldwell and Howell gathered memory shards and dream fragments, sifting them like archaeologists.

A cracked mirror whispered: “You are too much.” Another replied: “You were never enough.”

Tesla stood at the edge of a spiral canyon of static, calling out with a pulse of intent. Clara, moving through corridors of soft light, whispered names: Dayna. Lindsay. Ember. The boy.

In the ruins of a library built from his discarded journal pages, one version of Frank sat crying into a handkerchief made of rejection emails.

Another wandered alone in a hospital wing built from echoing footsteps and beeping monitors.

And yet another Frank stared into a pool of glass, watching the wedding, the birth, the collapse on repeat—trying to decide which one defined him most.

The boy wasn’t lost. He was arriving.

One layer at a time.

Scene 5 – Those Who Return

The Wastelands cracked.

Not loudly. Not violently. Just enough to let breath in.

Poe stepped forward through a curtain of static. Ink ran down his fingertips like blood. His coat was ragged, his eyes tired—but aware.

Beside him, Aleister Crowley flicked ash from a cigarette that hadn’t been lit. He grinned like someone who had found meaning and decided it wasn’t enough.

ALEISTER: “So this is what the end looks like.”

POE: “Not the end. The echo.”

They stood on the edge of Frank’s shattered wedding vow, the scent of jasmine still lingering in the cracked sky.

ALEISTER: “He’s here, isn’t he? All of him.”

POE: “Yes. And none of him knows how to forgive the rest.”

Somewhere nearby, a streak of paint slashed across the wind.

A girl stepped forward—barefoot, holding a palette smeared with every color she had never dared to name.

Ember didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

The Wastelands responded to her presence. Color returned where she walked. Light hummed gently where she passed.

Clara felt it first. The warmth. The spark.

CLARA: “She’s memory. But also something else.”

TESLA: “She’s permission. To begin again.”

And high above them all, invisible but growing closer—

the Host smiled.

THE HOST (echoing): “How sweet. You’ve brought the whole cast back for the finale.”

Its voice was velvet wrapped around a razor.

THE HOST: “Let’s see who survives the rewrite.”

[TO BE CONTINUED]

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