Unmasked and bare they stood before him in militaristic rank and file, with countless rows behind the first stretching on and on, far exceeding the limits of his sight. Sweeping through the sea of faces with his eyes, perplexed and confused, he struggled to understand the meaning behind the cryptic spectacle that had unfolded before him.
Undeniably, they were his captors, the very same savages responsible for his current plight; the very same dictators who had banished him to this accursed isle of exile. Yet, beyond his wildest expectations, they did not bear the hideous visages of monsters, faces that would have been perfectly aligned with their heinous actions, but implausibly, wore the dispassionate faces of humans instead.
As he started to zoom in on those seemingly human faces, this time focusing his attention on the individual, it made his heart shiver when he realized that he could identify every single face in the contingent. Friends and enemies, relatives and acquaintances, students and mentors, colleagues and companions, even those of his aged parents, even that of the one that he loved, they were all observing him collectively as he shook his head in disbelief, his mind desperately searching for an answer and his spirit, longing for a resolution.
And just as he began to question the fragility of his own sanity, his eyes stumbled upon a face that allowed him to rise above the confusion; a face that bestowed upon him the salient revelation that he had been searching for all this while. There, nestled within the eerie stillness of the sea of faces, amongst the cold-hearted ranks of the army of enforcers, he finally found the one that he had known for the longest time; he finally found himself.
Enlightened by the truth, he now understood the secret identity of the enforcers, and founded upon that knowledge, the essence of the very chains that bound him; how strong they could grow, yet how weak they could be if only he had the eyes to see them for what they really were. Empowered by that liberating revelation, he effortlessly broke the chains that imprisoned him in plain sight for all to see, shattering them into pieces as though they were mere threads of brittle clay, and the old desk that he could never find refuge from followed suit, crumbling down in a landslide of wood and dust, leaving behind in its place a beautiful set of wings emanating glory that rivaled those of divinities, angels and seraphs.
As he reached out to touch the heavenly feathers of the glowing wings, they bathed him in an ethereal light more intense than any he had ever felt before, and through his body the light ran until it emerged as a perfect set of wings on the other side of his chest, seamlessly woven into the skin of his back, held to him by flesh and blood and not by the unfeeling bindings of chains and steel.
As the enforcers rushed in to lay hold of him, he lifted his feet off the ground and rose up into the sky high above and beyond their reach, soaring through the air and grazing the heavens as he embarked on his maiden flight. Dancing on a stage of sapphire blue and bursting through the clouds like he had always dreamed of doing, he flew and flew until he once again came within view of the city, but this time, for the first time since the days of his childhood, he saw it in more than just shades of gray and white, but in the full splendor of an array of bright and beautiful colours.
-------------- The End ------------
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