Before Arrhazon fell into revolution, one man underwent a quiet revolution of his own.

Sk’vra Kjurha, long llhaesa’s tormentor and active accomplice in her downfall, went to bed one night thinking back on his workday, thoughts that somehow veered off and flowed backward across the span of his life. What he saw, what he looked at from a new direction, as if his mind snapped across some demarcation line of perspective, was dismaying.

Sk’vra fell into self-judgment, the images he saw, and the conclusion drawn, triggered an uncontrolled cascade of tears, tears accompanied by wailing sounds of woe.

There was no ducking away from the image of llhaesa t’yaeli, someone he long thought left him constantly demeaned, devalued, and scorned. He knew – he always knew, but looked to justify his own weakness by assigning her slights – llhaesa was one of a kind as a musician, as an activist, as a humanist, and simply a wonderful human being to know.

While thinking on llhaesa was hardly unusual given his madness trying to lash out at her over the years, the shape of these new thoughts would surprise llhaesa, or for that matter, anyone who attended N’rellia whilst both Sk’vra and llhaesa were students there.

At N’rellia, and well after N’rellia, Sk’vra devoted his energy not to his own betterment, but to destroying llhaesa. He tacitly succeeded, and ironically, his final success was now his biggest regret.

If Sk’vra could undo events, if he could go back to their first year at N’rellia, he would reach out to llhaesa in friendship, instead of how he lashed out in anger, driven by jealousy and envy. Instead of trying to prove himself the better musician, he would marvel at her talents, and just let his talent flow.

Instead, the jealousy, anger, and envy swallowed him whole, and as a result, he pissed his musical ability away, turning into some shell of a man who tried to lift himself up by pulling someone else down.

Now, llhaesa was dead, and he contributed to her death; this fact would haunt him into eternity.

Sk’vra fell into sleep after another two hours of merciless self-examination, his soul finally freed by embracing the truth. Sk’vra slept better through the remaining night than he had in years.

The following morning, keeping a commitment made during the night, he sat down and began to write a letter of apology to llhaesa’s wife Jahrae. Writing the greeting was easy – he simply wrote ‘Jahrae.’

What came after proved difficult; an hour in, and no words followed the greeting. Frustrated, Sk’vra reached within, ripped away all of the wanton waste of his mind, tore at the barriers, the things that fuelled the worst of him. He created breathing room and pathways for love, for friendship, room for his soul to grow and embrace the love of others, ready to reciprocate, or even reach out with no need for positive feedback.

The first words were tentative; as with the tears of the previous night, the floodgates released words on a flow of emotion. Regret begat lament begat an apology, an apology he knew Jahrae would tacitly accept as some curiosity that teased her torment, yet would find some compartmentalised comfort and sense of a universe ministering toward an equilibrious right.

She would not reply, and he did not wish for her to reply. Her pain would find no relief by his words, nor would her anger towards his earlier actions; but the bleeding would stop, she would hold the small satisfaction of knowing he recognised his wrongs.

They would meet these two; they would meet during the revolution, when as the rebel Arrhazonans took city centre, chaos reigned.

On that day, people ran in every which direction, often with weaponry fired uncomfortably close by. Bodies lay scattered in the park across from the government centre, smoke reduced visibility to the single metres. The stench of death, the singing of hair and skin, the screams of the injured, the stinging of eyes tinged by unwanted airborne irritants, all served to feed the chaotically brewed morass of those overzealously out to set things right, facing those who stood in opposition.

Sk’vra approached this scene tentatively. This was a revolution he belatedly felt a call to join, no longer fearful of rejection by those he too long opposed. Sk’vra tended to injured, and he sought help for others. He tackled and disarmed one soldier loyal to Brellian, in the process the pinkie on his right severed from the last fold upward.

The injury leaving him in shock, his mind blocked out the injury after he wrapped the stub in cloth. Sk’vra pressed on through the crowd, oblivious to the violence that played around him on a million stages that claimed independence of action, yet were part of some larger whole.

Reaching the government tower that housed Brellian’s penthouse office and living spaces, Sk’vra felt the back of his clothing catch fire. Dropping and rolling, the fire quickly suppressed, with only a slight burn inflicted upon his skin. Pushing aside screaming and fighting people, some clad in tattered black uniforms, some clad in whatever they chose to wear that day excepting for a red and white bandanna, Sk’vra, now in burned and singed clothing, made his way into the tower entryway.

Power was out; the only way to the top was by way of the stairwell, a stairwell that found hundreds of others working their way toward the top, while others shot their way down.

A second stairwell, a service entrance, was less well known, and thus less well occupied. Rebel forces made their way upward, racing against time. In the lead were Jahrae, Gl’nsiel, Jesnsera, and M’traliel, who hoped to reach Brellian before the other rebels fighting their way to his offices.

Sk’vra was ahead of Jahrae in time, her arrival came a half hour after he entered the tower. With Sk’vra taking the well-occupied stairway, and Jahrae taking the lightly travelled one, the two reached the top at the same time.

One of Brellian’s special guards took aim at Jahrae, her assailant unseen as Jahrae focused attention elsewhere. Seeing the imminent threat unfold in front of him, Sk’vra acted on impulse.

The guard moved to squeeze the trigger on his weapon; milliseconds before, Sk’vra, anticipating this discharge, called upon every ounce of decency inside of him, channelling and transforming this soul-originating force into pent up and dischargeable energy, his body drawing upon it as it willed itself to spring into the air.

Sk’vra watched with satisfaction, for he saw the success of this moment, success visible in the last second of his existence as represented by the path of the weapon’s discharge. Taking the full brunt of the discharge from the guard’s weapon, there was nothing left of Sk’vra to come down upon the floor.

For Jahrae, her attention redirected as she heard Sk’vra spring into a leap, it was as if time slowed. In her mind’s eye, the guard fired in her direction – directly at her – while Sk’vra’s leap carried him right into the path of the discharge. The scene concluded with the guard falling from a weapon fired from still another direction.

There was no time to ponder what occurred, for there was a final task to do that yet went unfinished. On another day, and at another time, Jahrae would re-read Sk’vra’s electronic message of apology, one she saved months before for some unknown reason, now sending it off to the Museum of the Equalists Revolution, where Sk’vra received in death what proved so elusive in life.