When I looked up at the sky, it seemed wrong. It looked fractured, wounded even.
"Will it always look like this?"
He turned to me and said, "No, but it won't ever look quite the same. Are you okay with that?"
"Are you sure?" "Oh yes, I'm quite sure."
"What am I to do?"
His eyes followed the cracks in the sky.
"The sky is split, and who you are sits precariously as you make your next choices. What you once looked upon for hope and joy no longer provides you with the answers you seek, though the answer it truly is.
He reached into his pocket and retrieved a very small leather-bound book with a small symbol on it; I did not recognize it.
"You are wounded, just as the clouds we look upon. But what does it matter? All our skies look different yet we all understand it just the same. We know what the sky is to us, and what it was for, and as long as we walk on in search of a new sky and a new joy, we will one day find it. The only true sadness is that of death, in which there are no choices to be made."
He handed me the small book.
"This holds what you seek."
The pages are blank.
"How so?" I asked.
"The name of this book is Arashi, and as you weather more and more its pages will begin to fill with reminders of your best. And those will remain with you, marking you as someone who has truly lived."
"And in honor of this thing I’ve given to you, be blessed and take joy in the paths you pave across the wasteland that we occupy. Breathe life into what you are and who you are to be. And regret nothing, for regret is the truest and most potent of any sin."
He lifted his arms to the sky and showed me his, a cacophony of cracks and splinters, yet he smiled so gloriously at the carnage.
"This does not make you sad?" I asked.
"It did once."
"What about now?"
The man's arms returned to his side, and then he raised one to me.
"Weather the storm. You will find joy in the wasteland one day, I promise you this."
"Godspeed." He said to me.
And now I know why.
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