Jibril looked the age he would be now. His hair was long than he kept it around the time he died, but shorter than when we first met. Being two years my senior, the sandy blond had faded to a dusty Grey. His savagely intelligent eyes were framed by lines that read like esoteric charts to forgotten lands. His suit was not as tattered as the one I remember him wearing in his last days.
We were at some evening gathering where Tich Nhat Hanh was supposed to speak, but he did have that stroke, and, instead was on side-show display. His spasmed movements spoke of severed and damaged brain wires. There was no serenity to be offered by this. Outside, the world was starting to burn down.
"As you can see, I'm still alive," Jibril said as we attempted to look away from the spectacle before us. "But they're coming for me tonight, and then it will be the End of Days."
"You know I don't believe in that shit," I said with a bit of a snort. In the years since my mother's and the bruja's respective deaths, my ability to take anything on anything other than analysis and inquiry had dropped drastically.
"The Universe doesn't care what you believe," Jibril said coldly. A mantra I've heard on both the science and religious sides of the aisle.
Two minutes left and the world is gonna end...
