TE23 Double Feature

Sandrine Collette

The Forests

pain. Some diffuse sensation crawled through his veins, a latent sadness, a feeling that should have been cheerful but just couldn’t be.

Now what do we do?

Maybe that was it, the pain in his gut.

And why—to die a little later, a little lonelier. His thoughts were all knotted up inside him. A huge white veil covered them, and they led nowhere. The direction was missing. Not left or right: the direction that makes you get up in the morning. Whenever he tried to make sense of it all, Corentin put his head in his hands and squeezed so hard his bones cracked.

There. He’d made it.

The road had come to an end—and now? Fear.

He closed his eyes, squeezing so tight it hurt. It stung, beneath his lids.

Now what do we do?

What to do, what to do. Everything that only yesterday you took for granted.

We live. We survive.

But why? How long? How?

His strength had vanished.

The very questions they’d been asking in the catacombs, not three weeks ago. They’d been laughing. Their answers were complete nonsense. Now he had to find answers, urgently. 78

He’d believed he would save Augustine—but Augustine hadn’t needed him in order to survive or to begin dying.

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