setting: february 4th, it’s monday morning and as cyrus and @fortunesfalco step upon the stones of the divide, light peeks through the clouds hanging overhead. it casts a streak of pale brightness atop the wreckage, painting a tale of a city once again torn in two.
“So, this is where it all happened?” This is where it could have all ended but luckily for him it hadn’t because then he would have one more regret to add to his already long list and to have been absent for the fall of Cosimo Capulet would have been close at the top of it. “The bombing was still on the news when I landed in Milan in November. I thought—” He remembers what he thought, that there had been a chance his mother had somehow found herself among the wreckage. But he had felt no panic because a large part of him doubted it — he would have known it, somehow, if she had died. Though a smaller part of him had wished for it.
It had been months since he had last spoken to her at that point and years since he last had any meaningful conversation with her, not that he considered anything she said to him to be conversation. Nor meaningful, at that. It had always been half truths or no truths with her. And he was weary, tired of all her bullshit.
Nevertheless when his feet had touched Italian soil, his thoughts had speared toward her instantly as if she had been a beacon on fire and he a revenant. And while his thoughts had raced to his mother, he had taken his time in making his way back to the place that had molded him. He felt the pull of the city, his city, and most importantly, he heard the call of destruction wailing in the night like a mother longing for her child to come back. It had been almost two weeks since the bombing when he returned last year and the mess it made had awoken something in him, something that would answer Verona’s call to devour.
“I thought the damage would have been worse closer up but it looks quite poetic against this backdrop — like a ruin now, split right down the middle.” Cyrus turns to Mikael Falco, wondering why they even bothered. “Are you sure you need to rebuild this? Tourists pay a lot to take pictures with broken things. And that boat ride across the Adige could make a pretty penny.”
