Divine body

A while later, after his mother had calmed down, everyone sat down at the round table with the food in front of them. There was still some food left, so there was no problem serving Nathan the food, then they all held hands and closed their eyes in prayer, Nathan's mother cleared her voice and began to speak: "O Almighty God, God of day and night, thank you for blessing us with this food. O almighty Goddess, Goddess of sadness and joy, thank you for blessing us with the presence of our loved ones"

As everyone continued to pray, Nathan quietly opened his eyes and looked around the table. There were three men counting him and his brother and two women counting his mother, four siblings in all, Nathan, his twin brother Doran, and his younger siblings, also twins Cristian and Catalina.

Nathan looked at his mother and smiled. Miriam, the woman who had given him life and cared for him for 24 years, he looked at the second-hand clock he had bought years ago and brought as a gift. The hands now read 23:59. There was less than a minute to go before a new day and his 25th birthday.

His mother was still praying in the background, but Nathan was more focused on the clock on the wall. As the two hands of the clock met at twelve o'clock, a sharp pain, stronger than the previous ones, stabbed into his head, forcing him to close his eyes in discomfort. When he opened his eyelids, instead of sitting at the table with his family, he found himself in a white room filled with greyish smoke.

Nathan opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a muffled sigh and the feeling that he was short of breath. He closed his mouth and massaged his neck with discomfort, then looked sideways at his arm to realize that something was different.

He looked down and down at his hand, only to realize that his body had no clothes on it, not even skin. His arm was made of shadows, not just his arm, his whole body was the same, with black smoke emanating from it.

Nathan began to worry, but did not panic, instead he looked around anxiously, only to realize that he was not alone, for several dozen meters away there was the silhouette of another person, and then another.

In all, there were twelve silhouettes of shadows forming a huge circle. Nathan did not know what to think, he only knew that he was not alone and that there were eleven people who, like him, seemed to be trapped in this strange place.

With the intention of finding out what was going on, Nathan tried to get closer to the person closest to him, but he couldn't, his legs refused to move, forcing him to stay still in his place.

"Did I died, is this heaven?' His thoughts began to wander, but before he could even think of worrying any more, he felt something appear within him.

He didn't hear a voice, and no one said anything to him, but somehow, he had knowledge in his head that he didn't have before. Nathan looked at the shadowy silhouettes around him and thought to himself: 'Twelve divine bodies?'

'Immortal divine bodies?' Nathan looked at his shadow arms again.

The information he had suddenly received wasn't much, but it was too strange, almost like a dream. Every person in this place possessed a divine body, making a total of twelve divine bodies. He also understood that he had what was called an immortal divine body.

That was all the information he received at that moment, no more and no less.

Suddenly another stab of pain went through his head and before he knew it, Nathan was back at the table with his family and his mother, still praying.

Nathan looked at his watch and realized that not even a minute had passed, but he felt that he had been in this strange place for at least five minutes. He looked at his family and it seemed as if none of them had noticed, as if it had never happened.

Seconds later, his mother stopped praying and they all let go of each other's hands as they slowly opened their eyes. Nathan pretended to do the same as the others and they began to talk quietly while they ate, but Nathan was anything but quiet.

As Nathan answered questions about his work and the town, time passed, and night fell. Everyone went to sleep, and Nathan was no exception, for he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep... but he was afraid, afraid to close his eyes and find himself back in that strange place.

His eyes were red and irritated because he had stopped blinking as much as possible, but it was impossible not to blink for more than an hour.

Looking around, Nathan noticed that everyone was asleep. 'Right...' He got up carefully and quietly made his way to the bathroom. Once inside, he lit a candle, which illuminated his reflection in the mirror.

Nathan touched his face, reassuring himself that what he felt was skin... and not shadows.

"Sighing quietly, Nathan took a wooden cup and filled it with water from a bucket beside him.

He drank it quickly, without stopping, until his thirst was quenched. When he looked in the mirror again, his reflection was no longer himself, but a black shadow in front of him.

A soft scream came from his mouth and his legs gave out, causing him to fall backwards. Out of reflex, Nathan leaned on his hands to break his fall, but as the floor was old and wooden, a large splinter of wood stuck in the middle of his palm.

"Hmmm!" Nathan grunted in pain without raising his voice, just biting his lips, and slowly pulling himself up from the floor. He looked down at his hand with the splinter in it and started to shake.

The large splinter had gone almost all the way through his palm, it had somehow missed his bones and was the only thing keeping Nathan from bleeding to death.

Nathan took the towel from the pocket of his overalls and held the splinter, intending to cover his wound to stop the bleeding. With such hygiene, his wound would surely become infected, and he would lose his hand... if not his life. But he was a laborer from a poor, uneducated village. What would he know?

Nathan bit down on his shirt and tightened his grip on the splinter with his other hand, preparing to remove it, when a voice on the other side of the door startled him.

"Nathan? Are you fine?" The voice belonged to his mother, who had apparently shielded him when he had fallen and had gone to see if he was all right.

Nathan almost lost consciousness and balance from the pain, but he stood upright before looking down at his hands. His mother's sudden question had caused him to pull the splinter out of his hand, and now his blood was pouring out onto the floor in large quantities. There was also a hole in his hand, and he could clearly see the inside.

Nathan had to use all his willpower not to faint or vomit, so he replied in a calm voice: "It's all right... I just dropped a cup"

"I understand... be careful" Miriam replied before leaving the bathroom, presumably to go back to sleep.

Without his mother present, Nathan concentrated on the hole in his hand and began to panic.

'What am I going to do?!' Never before had he suffered such a serious injury. Occasionally, back at the factory, a machine would break down and injure its operator. Nathan had heard such stories, but he had never seen one with his own eyes.

He began to feel weak from the loss of blood, but just as he was about to give up and call his family for help, he took one last look at the wound in his palm, only to see the nerves in his hand grow back and connect with each other, his muscles quickly growing out of nowhere and closing the wound, and finally the skin covering those exposed muscles again.

Nathan's mind went blank, he couldn't understand what he was seeing, he didn't know what to think. He was in shock.

As if nothing had happened, the horrible wound had disappeared in seconds and now the only sign that he had ever been injured was the large pool of blood beneath his feet.

With a blank stare, Nathan bent down and began to clean the pool of blood. He spent the better part of an hour wiping away the blood before leaving the bathroom and going to his bed, pulling the covers over him and closing his eyes tightly.

'It's only a dream... yes, a dream. Tomorrow I'll wake up, go to the factory, and wait until my birthday to go to my hometown and visit my family... sounds like a good plan' Nathan mentally planned.

He was so tired that it didn't take him more than ten seconds to fall asleep. Only to be awakened a few hours later by the sun hitting his eyelids and the sound of conversation in the other room of the house.

Nathan opened his eyes aggressively and stood staring at the ceiling for a few seconds as his body began to shake.

He raised his hand to his face and couldn't see a single mark on his skin. He put his hand to the side of his body and closed his eyes tightly as he repeated to himself: 'It's a dream, it's a dream, it's a dream. It's all a bad dream'

***

Several years later, Nathan got out of bed, made himself a cup of coffee, got dressed and picked up his briefcase before leaving his small apartment to go to the factory.

He walked through the crowded streets with dull eyes and a mournful expression on his face. The work at the factory was hard, too hard to do the same thing all his life. Nathan was bored, terribly bored and frustrated.

He earned a pittance, barely enough to eat every day, and what little he saved he sent to his family in the village. He could not call his current state of life his life.

Nathan stopped and looked up at the sky before whispering through the crowd: "Torture... yes, that word fits him better"

Tens of hundreds of meters above him was the end of the cliff, and although he couldn't see it, there was the white city where rich people congregated and lived happily ever after without worrying if they would have food the next day.

Dark feelings began to swirl inside him, but he shook them away himself by shaking his head.

Nathan sighed and continued walking. A few minutes later he arrived a few blocks away from the factory where he worked, only to see people fleeing the place quickly. He didn't need to ask anyone what was going on, it was obvious from the heat in the air and the column of smoke rising into the sky that the factory had caught fire.

His hands lost strength and his briefcase fell to the floor. Nathan could only stand still as he watched the smoke slowly rise into the sky. Society was competitive, he had fought too hard to get a job in the factory, he had worked too hard to keep his job and now it was all gone in an instant.

His eyes rose and followed the smoke until he unconsciously looked up at the sky again, and a little further to the right, at the white city.

Nathan whispered again, watching the smoke disappear long before it reached the edge of the white city: "Do they know what the smell of burning is like up there? What suffering smells like? No, I don't think so"

Knowing that there was nothing more he could do in this place, Nathan decided to go back to his apartment. As he entered, he threw his briefcase on the floor and walked to the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror and pressing the edge of the sink.

Five years had passed since that day and Nathan could not see a single difference in his face, perhaps only because of the dark circles under his eyes. But otherwise, even at 30, he still had the same body he had at 25.

It had been several months since he had been in the city, but seeing Doran, his twin brother, grow old, even if only by a few years, and him remaining the same, made him feel lonely... extremely lonely.