THE STARS DO NOT DEMAND_ Chapter Seventeen_ THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 (Apologies -- a bout of food poisoning had me accidently post this before it was finished. Sorry)

"The only requirement for surviving is to remember the lesson from every scar." 

- Lucas

Lucas had lost count of the ways his life had been in jeopardy.

But he was sure that he had never been in danger of being killed by a movie poster ... 

actually an ancient book possessed of sentience,  sorcery ... and not a shred of morality.

Not unlike himself ... would that be poetic justice he thought.

Whatever the Book had planned for him, death was the least of it.

The longer he lived, the more Lucas saw things differently. Everything gained in mystery and grandeur ...

becoming more and more unknown, not less ... and beautiful somehow if you only looked at the complexity of it all ...

yet more remote at the same time as if his mind flinched from what it sensed in the invisible threads woven in the world.

He had never dared trying to "turn the corner" to someplace he had never been, fearing what would happen.

Lucas thought desperation was the raw material of drastic change, usually for ill rather than good.

Later he could never explain why he wrapped his arms around the two beside him and cried out, "Shut your eyes!"

Cosmic fire ate his world as he thought:

'The stars do not demand you go into the darkness, but if you wish to see them that is what you must do.'