{"id":4697,"date":"2021-09-13T10:25:43","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T14:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4697"},"modified":"2021-09-15T17:57:42","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T21:57:42","slug":"twenty-four-05-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/?p=4697","title":{"rendered":"Twenty-four – 06"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This post is from Matt Astoris’s point of view.]<\/em><\/p>\n

For a few seconds, Matt closed his eyes, listening to the small sounds around him\u2014the sound of his nephew\u2019s footsteps down the path, the soft hiss and crackle of the forge, the sound of drizzle on the roof, the rumble of distant thunder.\u00a0 They were sounds that marked the cadence of his life, had marked the cadence of his life for nearly two decades.<\/p>\n

And yet, there were still the long-ago echoes of a different life that drifted back to him\u2014the laughter and chatter of college students moving along the paths between dorms and classes, meetings and meals. \u00a0The chime of the clocktower\u2019s bells, the ghosts of which still haunted his dreams sometimes, though the bells hadn\u2019t sounded since the end of everything came.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t the only one who heard the call of those bells over the years\u2014it was a conversation he and his friends had had time and again.\u00a0 Sometimes, they would hear the song, tricks of memory that seemed to be made real.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope he actually saw a memory of you, Mar,\u201d he whispered into the empty force.\u00a0 \u201cI hope it wasn\u2019t something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghosts haunted them, haunted everywhere they\u2019d ever gone.\u00a0 As much as J.T. tried to reassure them that they weren\u2019t a big problem\u2014if a problem at all\u2014sometimes, Matt wondered.<\/p>\n

He also still wondered what else<\/em> haunted their home, beyond just the ghosts of those now long gone.<\/p>\n

Maybe getting away will be good for them.\u00a0 Something different\u2014something new.<\/em><\/p>\n

Exhaling a sigh, he pulled the metal from the forge and laid it on the anvil again.\u00a0 He rolled his shoulder and began to hammer again, the motion and the sound a soothing rhythm that had ordered his world since the August Sunday when everything he\u2019d ever known had changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This post is from Matt Astoris’s point of view.] For a few seconds, Matt closed his eyes, listening to the small sounds around him\u2014the sound of his nephew\u2019s footsteps down the path, the soft hiss and crackle of the forge, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[336,337,374,14],"tags":[340,150,171,170,181,149,148,168,147,165,146],"class_list":["post-4697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ambrose-cycle","category-book-8","category-chapter-24-book-8","category-story","tag-ambrose-cycle","tag-awakenings","tag-fantasy","tag-fiction","tag-matthew-astoris","tag-original-fiction","tag-post-apocalyptic","tag-serial","tag-serial-fiction","tag-story","tag-web-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EBlN-1dL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4697"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4701,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697\/revisions\/4701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awakenings.embklitzke.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}