EXCERPT #1: GIDEON

Glorious in fame, unwounded and perfect, one might never think that deep within Gideon, are the wounds of the past, the time when he loved deeply and when he learned how loving too deeply can make one fall into despair, the way his mother succumbed to death.Atrocities of love, missing families, home. He might be intact but deep down he is a different person.

EXCERPT #2: MOTHER

Young Gideon used to feel things deeply. He was his mother's son, estranged and probably stubborn to a fault. He loved relentlessly and lived tenaciously, the way his mother did.Gideon might be seen as the peculiar one, but he had seen a kaleidoscopic multi-colored horizon through his mother's eyes and understood that even the oddest shade is still a color.And one could never imagine how the rich color within him could strip away completely in a blink of an eye, just like how his mother's eyes darkened the moment the love of her life walked out of her life. He, after all, is his mother's son.A slow death is the hardest to witness, Gideon learned it the hard way.When a parent dies, for those left behind it can feel as though half the sky has fallen. His mother was the sheltering sky, and beneath his mild firmament no storm ever raged, no hard rain fell. And to watch everything slip away slowly and surely, was the greatest torment that he would never wish on his worst enemy.Not everyone is a hero, how he wished he could be one to turn things around.

EXCERPT #2: ATLAS

The bridge has not been burned, yet Gideon believed it has been broken beyond repair.He had lived with the guilt, and despair, of being the witness to his mother's passing that he failed to remember that Atlas was there too all along.They were an odd pair of twins, even before everything fell apart. The warrior and the pacifier.Gideon had never really understood Atlas. Atlas was quiet, and quiet people always know more than they seem. He was calm and collected, and perhaps Atlas indeed is the most observant, absorbent person of all. But alas, Gideon loved him deeply, for they are the same soul split in two.

Yet something shifted between them, along with the tragedy that fell upon them. The way his twin brother moved through life as if it were suddenly fragile— careful and calculated.The past, mayhaps, had changed his brother, the way it changed him too.Gideon wanted to shout, to shake Atlas and tell him not to shy away from life, but charge toward it, even if it meant getting hurt.But what an irony, to be mad at someone for losing themselves, when his own willingness to live flickered like a dying fire.Perhaps, despite all the distance, they were still twins, one soul split into two. And he's not sure how can he ignite the fire within both of them.