We Die Beautiful

In the undercity’s last light, the towers leaned like tired giants, their windows gone pink with dying neon. Mira knelt in the flooded street, fingers tracing ripples where smaller children waded through broken glass and old wires, laughing as if the ruins were a playground. Above them, Lina balanced on a rusted ledge, coat snapping in the chemical wind, watching the same way she always had—half guardian, half ghost.
They had been born after the sky closed. No one remembered the surface. Down here the air tasted of rust and sweet rot, and every sunset was a lie painted on wet brick. Still they dressed the wreckage in color, braided wire into crowns, and called the collapse beautiful because it was theirs.
When the supports finally sang, and the street began to sink, Mira did not run. She only looked up at Lina and smiled, as if dying in this place, together, were the most graceful thing they would ever do.