The sun sank low, spilling its blood-orange light over a ruined coastline where the jungle met the sea. "The air tasted of salt and the day's settling dust." Once, this was where the Tigress and the Bull had promised to rebuild the world. Now, the promise lived only as faint echoes in the air — like wishes upon stars that never landed.
The Tigress sat on the sand, her body frail but her eyes still burning with that old, grounded brilliance. The ocean whispered around her feet. The insignia on her arm had faded, nearly erased by time — the mark of a leader who never got her turn to lead. Her illness had hollowed her frame but not her will.
From the water came the Bull, shoulders broad, skin lined with the memory of battle. Scars mapped his body like a history no one wanted to read. His steps were heavy, his silence heavier still.
“How did your campaign go, old friend?” she asked without looking at him. “Has the jungle finally awakened?”
He stood still for a long time, the waves breaking around his legs. “Awakened?” he said at last. “It thrashes in its sleep, mistaking noise for awakening.”
He lowered himself beside her. Together they watched the restless sea, the horizon bruised with dusk. The sound of the surf seemed to carry the weight of all they had hoped for, and all that had slipped away.
“They wanted change,” she murmured. “You gave it to them.”
“They wanted the idea of change,” he said. “Not the work. Not the pain. They called for a flood, but fled when the waters rose.”
She let out a soft breath that could have been laughter. “They always do. You bring the storm; I bring the structure — and both demand discipline. They want neither.”
The wind picked up, scattering ash and pollen across the horizon. The jungle burned somewhere far behind them, though the light of it looked almost like sunset.
The jungle stirred and whispered, yet its thick leaves and tangled roots let only fragments of her brilliance pass through. Even her light, sharp as dawn, was swallowed by shadows before it could reach the heart of its inhabitants.
“So it ends here,” she said quietly. “The heroes who never were.”
The sun slipped beneath the sea, and the light withdrew from the shore. In the fading glow, the sand seemed to swallow their shadows. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called once, then fell silent.
The Bull closed his eyes. “Then let it be so,” he said. “Let the jungle remember that once, it was offered salvation — and chose comfort instead.”
He rose, his silhouette cutting against the first stars. He faced the dark line of the jungle, where the fires were dimming into smoke. “And when it cries out again,” he said, “may the wind remind it what it refused.”
The tide reached them, then passed, washing over their footprints until the shore forgot they had ever been there. Above, the stars began their slow, indifferent dance — the same ones they had once wished upon, still bright, still distant, still out of reach.
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