A Map of Broken Streets

Previously

…It wasn’t the absence of sound, but the presence of something else: a profound shift. The adventurous spirit that had defined them was still there, a flickering flame, but it was now tempered by the chilling winds of consequence. They had survived the firestorm, but the landscape of their lives, like the broken streets they’d once navigated with such bravado, had been irrevocably altered. A new dawn was coming, but it would be one they faced with a sobered heart and a clearer, if more somber, understanding of the world. The thrill was gone, replaced by a gnawing uncertainty, but their bond, forged in the crucible of their shared defiance, remained. It was all they had left.