TE23 Double Feature

The Forests

Sandrine Collette

to be exact. Every trip would take an entire gray day. Corentin’s arms became stalks of pain, his legs, raw bones. His breathing too hoarse in his chest. He would go on. It was their life which he was stockpiling in the Little Town, which he brought back on those days of fatigue. The thing had gone through there on market day. Corentin wandered around the marketplace among the scorched stalls, the burned goods, the burned figures. There was nothing left.

seemed intact. The shelves of merchandise had not been looted, the products had not been moved. Eight thousand people in one blow.

Eight thousand, and nobody.

___

And he wondered how many times since the catastrophe he had said: there’s nothing left.

Nothing.

This word would have sufficed to speak of the world from then on. He wandered for a long time. Maybe he was expecting to come upon some living souls, even if he didn’t believe he would—the shops 98

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