Tag: Selene

Writer's Wednesday!

WW Elementals–Finale Part 1

AutumnB17

This is a continuation of the “Elementals” series. Comment which power you would like to have below for a shout-out in the next post!

“Her color is too pale. She needs a blood transfusion immediately.” 

Color, I thought, I remember color. My lips curled into a droopy smile. The sedatives were acting fast, rolling me gently into sleep, sliding me deeper and deeper into the calm, dark sea. The sea, the gentle sea, the sea that reminded me of Daria, who reminded me of gold, then of yellow by comparison.

Yellow. The dopey smile dripped off my face. I’d never liked yellow like others. Never liked how it felt, so…fake. Like it was trying too hard to be cheery. An artificiality, a toxic positivity that growled at you “everything is alright,” when everything was far from it. Yellow was sickness, negative thoughts masked by a bright facade. 

Toxic, jaundiced, and yet, a memory drifted to me then, a very mixed memory of my time as a human. A memory that I wasn’t sure was even real or a figment of my drowsy imagination.

“No, please, we can wait, just give her five more minutes!” A frantic voice. What were they doing there in my memory? I let the echoes drift into the oblivion, settling deeper into the recollection, welcoming the fragments of speech as they lazily wheedled their way into my mind.

A school day. My lashes grazed my cheeks again, ever so gently, feeling so downy and soft as clouds, so soft that I let my eyes rest with them. The white, beeping world was gone, giving way to the replaying of a moment in my mind. A moment the world would not long remember; a single flicker in any other person’s life, and yet, a precious instance all the same, one I would find pivotal to my life even lying there in that blank place. 

That place–wherever or whenever that was, that place. Somewhere with a bed. And a blanket. And white walls. And Talia, and Kenna, and Daria, all my friends, and a nice lady with sky-blue uniform and soft brown eyes. 

Yes, I would let myself rest my eyes, let my feathery lashes trail kisses on my cheeks. So I did. I rested there, then–whenever and wherever that was–and remembered an instance about color.

A school day, in autumn, when the Ohio breeze swirled and eddied and the leaves patterned a carpet on the earth, dancing in a breeze I could see but not feel. Inside, the cool wind could not tickle my nose, could only gust outside the window as I wistfully watched.

English class. My favorite class. I was Mira Casse, a student, a relatively normal girl with strange features and an even stranger set of parents. Parents no one mentioned, or was quiet about if they did. An unspoken agreement: the Casse family was not to be discussed; there was something wrong about them and their ‘daughter.’

“Okay, for this assignment, we are taking a break from our text analysis for a while,” the teacher announced, eyes wandering to the window, just like mine. I had the thought that she and I were very similar. We were both far away in our minds, both in a place beyond here, somewhere in that wide open expanse of sky and field and forest. 

A few students exchanged satisfied looks. Others outright cheered, chucking their books below their desks and tittering excitedly with their friends. Wide eyed, pleased to move on from endless compare and contrast, baby birds preening and squawking for a chance to leap from the nest.

The elation faded into a softer buzz as the teacher explained we were doing some free association and connotation work with colors. She would call on a few people with the first things that come to her mind when they named the color: emotions, objects, abstract ideas like freedom and wealth. 

“Blue.” The room shot up with hands, arms waving and protruding like blades of grass shooting from the dirt. Sky. Ocean. Water. Calm. Peaceful. Sad. Happy. And the responses bubbled, and tumbled, and crashed in with superficialities. The typical answers. 

The entirely unsatisfying answers that everyone else seemed to accept as their own personal truth–as though thinking that blue meant happiness was a personality trait. Something that made them special.

I returned my gaze to the window, thinking, wondering what blue really meant. Yearning, I decided. It was yearning, a soft yonder blue in the distance, painting the sky with hope. The promise of something greater beyond the horizon. 

As I thought this, a girl poked her fingers up and said, matter-of-fact, 

“Blue is bubbles!” 

 I sunk lower into my seat, frowning.

“Green.” Earth, eco-friendly, gentle, leaves, nature, envy, and I sunk even lower, frown deepening. Analyzing the yellowing grass beyond the glass, a great discomfort gripped my stomach as I felt something new grappling inside my body, twisting me all up inside, yanking at my core and tearing my being. 

Because I knew what green meant. 

Green was wistfulness, nostalgia, a warm, inviting tug that leads you to the meadow or the pasture or the forest. A reminder of a simpler time, an instinctual time when your heart knew the way through the winding path of life and guided you onward without hesitation. Purity. Instinct. Life. Nostalgia.

Yellow was even worse–happiness, sun, beach, I tightened my fists–red about the same, purple made my eyes squeeze shut and when it came to brown I finally raised my hand. Maybe I couldn’t explain the other colors, but I could explain brown, black, deep, dark shades. They seemed to me to be the most simple: pure and natural as tilled earth underfoot.

“Yes, Mira?” The teacher called. I drew in a deep breath, rethinking if I should answer at all, when I finally decided I had to. No one else could do this shade justice; no one in the school or the class or the world.

“Brown is humanity. Brown is the rich, dark earth that coddled our crops, the pools of honey that gifted us sweetness, the decadent truffles we extracted from our simple ingredients and harnessed into a unique experience of texture and flavor. 

Brown was when Prometheus granted us fire and lit the sepia kindling with flame, brown was when we smeared umber mud across our brows to protect us from mosquitos, brown were the feathers and fur of our game, brown was the mahogany that we built into thrones and homes and settlements. Brown is the reason we survived and the ways we thrived. It isn’t just a color. Not to me.”

The room was silent. Every set of eyes was staring at me in awe or disgust or confusion. But the teacher removed her gaze from the world outside the window and beamed at me, eyes sparkling with approval that loosened the knot in my core. 

“Brown is humanity,” she echoed. And with the kindness of her voice brimming over into the silent room, I recognized the twisting that had yanked my gut into knots. It was difference. Difference from the rest of my class, my grade, all of humanity.  

I realized, for the first time in my life, that perhaps I was not a normal school girl, couldn’t be a normal school girl. I was something more. And my gut knew it, my brain knew it, my heart knew it. I was something more. Something…other.

“We have to start the supplementation immediately, ma’am, we can’t wait any longer!” I startled from my memory, the fragments falling away but the tone of the reflection remaining. A mixed tone. Prideful. Bitter. Uncomfortable. Freeing. Overwhelming, and I…supplementation? Curiosity stirred within me, a feeling I wasn’t sure I could act upon. I was so, so tired, bone-tired, Atlas-with-the-sky-on-his-shoulders tired.

“Please, she can heal herself, just don’t give her any blood! It might hurt her!” Talia. I knew that voice. I had to come back, had to know what they were doing to me. A dull ache re-formed in my chest and I remembered the arrow, where I had ripped it from my skin. What were they trying to do to me? What was happening?
I tried to force my eyes open, but they were weighed down like a branch bending under snowfall. A prickle in my forearm–an IV. What was Talia fighting? What were the doctors trying…

“I can assure you, this will not hurt her…” 

The weight of sleep washed over me like a tidal wave, and I struggled for a moment, hearing Talia groan with exasperation. For a moment, I hung, suspended between the waking world and the unconscious one. 

Sleep overcame me at once and I drifted away into the deep, dark sea.

    Part 2 of the Elementals series finale is coming soon!

    Writer's Wednesday!

    WW-Elementals–Silver and Screams

    AutumnB17

    Ambulance image from Parkway East hospital

    Shock registered in his eyes. A smirk threatened my lips, even in the face of torture in a blood-soaked alley. Mouth twitching, I began to sneer…then I stopped. My speech had been impressive: beckoning on my gruesome fate, stating that I would never leave this alley alive, the alley where an innocent young girl named Daria died for the Artemisian agenda. A girl with the power to manipulate the sea: it was a power wasted, barely used before she was brutally kidnapped and mortally wounded. 

    My name is Selene, goddess of the moon and starlight. I was one of five Elementals: myself (starlight), Talia Thorn (storm), Zara Nightlock (earth), Daria (sea), and Kenna King, embers and fire. 

    We were humans with godly powers, a new race of hybrids with the combined powers to overthrow the Olympian gods and goddesses: the ones out of myth, the ones that shook the Earth, blazed through forests, and crushed ships in fits of rage and petty quarrels. We were united, if only for a few minutes. But just as soon as we’d been united, we’d been torn apart: Daria shot, Zara chasing after an illusion of her late sister, Talia and Kenna fleeing from Artemis’ mercenaries. 

    It was foolish of me to smile, to take satisfaction in the fact that I was a sitting duck, waiting to die, staring down the shaft of an arrow. The man–boy?–standing above me was in no way menacing, too fragile a gaze to even seem dangerous at all, though his nocked bow said otherwise. Large green eyes and a smatter of freckles all scrunched up, nose twitching with nerves, arrow jittering left and right with his severely shaking arms. 

    Something about the glint in his eyes screamed surprise, perhaps even downright terror. At me? Holding a dead body in my arms, face streaked with tears, starburst necklace torn from my throat? Arrogant of me to think that, but my lips began to quirk. I thought, for a split second, that his unwillingness to release the arrow was because of what I’d said, how he would have to defy Artemis’s orders and kill me if I were to leave Daria alone in that alley.

    A second later, when I followed his gaze, all satisfaction plummeted from my chest.
    Daria was alive.

    Inexplicably, her eyelids snapped open and shut, blinking in the darkness of the alcove. A shuddered breath rose and fell on my lap, her bloodsoaked chest expanding with a breath of air. Daria was alive. And her eyes were the brightest gold I’d ever seen.

    I’m ashamed of what I did next. But I did it anyway. Instead of feeling relief…I felt horror. I reeled back, slamming my head against the wall. I slid her off my lap frantically, with half the sense to gently place her head so it didn’t crack on the concrete. 

    She sat up. Fresh and dried blood had intermingled in an artful pattern on her back, like an abstract painting that would fetch millions in a modern art museum–a painting with random splashes of grotesque brown and dripping crimson, a splattered canvas that looked like nothing that ever existed and everything in the world all at once. Her gaze fell briefly on me, golden eyes disturbingly bright, hair falling limply around her large shoulders, the shoulders of a swimmer. 

    Less than a second passed, enough for me to feel uncomfortable at the fact that somewhere under that bloodsoaked suit, Daria’s heart was pulsing and thrumming with life when moments before it had been irrevocably stalled.

    Wavering on her feet, Daria stood, movements wobbly and uncertain, joints audibly groaning like a reanimated corpse from a horror movie. I saw her stare flicker to the mercenary, eyes glittering, the unnatural gold so unlike her original irises that it was as though they had been touched by the angels themselves. For the red-headed boy, that one glance was enough. 

    He shot.

    But he didn’t shoot Daria. 

    He shot me.

    Daria leapt forward, careening towards me to block the arrow. Colors blurred: I barely registered the gleaming silver tip until it embedded itself in my chest, a devastating slice as flesh was torn by metal. 

    All at once, events cascaded, transcending time in a fuzz of action. Daria grabbed my hand, a blur of motion. I willed my feet to move. Held my chest with one hand and her fingers in the other. My arm grasped, a thin, sticklike hand; the boy! His grip was strong but Daria tore me free, viciously dragging me from the alley. My legs felt numb. My chest throbbed. I knew what to do. I had done the same with Daria. I grasped the shaft of the arrow tight. Fletchings tickling my tensed wrist, I yanked as hard as I could.

    Pain shot through me, a train hurtling off the tracks. A morbid sound: of flesh tearing open, of capillaries bursting under impact. Daria gasped as I let the arrow fall, faltering to rip cloth from my shirt. Footsteps behind us. Running steps. Boots. 

    “Where are we going?” 

    “Busy road, the busiest we can find. I won’t let you die because of me!” Her voice was hoarse, emotions unexpectedly raw and heartfelt. What’s wrong with her eyes? Why is she here? Where am I? My heart pounded through my ribcage. The questions all blurred together. I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight: my throat was itchy with the urge to scream. All I could manage was a gasp of agreement…we needed to find help. 

    The next street we turned down was the one. Daria knew it. She glanced over her shoulder, a split second move that would only cost us time. He was right on top of us. I pressed the cloth harder to my chest, blood seeping through the fabric, sticky on my fingers. 

    “No, Selene, don’t go–”

    He was right behind us. No time. I pulled Daria through to the street, through to the busy thoroughfare crowded with people, when it struck me why she had paused. The people weren’t congregated on the sidewalk. They were all clustered, bees to their native hive, in the road. 

    This was bad. Daria had wanted to find a small group of people, or even an individual that would quietly drive us to the nearest hospital. What we had gotten was a mob. My thoughts faded in and out, dizziness sent my mind toppling back and forth between answerless questions and impossible scenarios. The boy reached out to grab my arm, a million possible actions rolled through my head: block his grip, kick his shins, lash out with my fists, throw myself into the street and beg for help. Anyone of those would do. I prepared myself, tensing my wrists for a strike…

    I screamed. Motionless, I didn’t have the sensibility to attack the mercenary, defend myself, tend to my own wounds or Daria’s mysteriously healing ones. Do I wish I wouldn’t have defaulted to the damsel-in-distress wail? Maybe, maybe not. But the reality is that I didn’t spring into action. I planted my feet. Tensed my wrists. And screamed. 

    Immediately all eyes snapped to us, the droves of people prying their eyes from whatever was in the road. Looking back, I can see that I probably made the right choice; in the eyes of those people Daria and I were two helpless girls, mortally wounded, obviously aggressed by the wide-eyed boy with a bizarre hunting bow. A moment passed. I wondered what they would do, how long the hunter would wait before he struck us down under the suspicious eyes of the public, how Daria had dragged herself from the grip of death and how I could do the same. 

    The people charged. Flocks of faces rushed toward me, a blur of diverse eyes and faces and freckles and not. Hands gripped my arm. I was led into the crowd. Daria disappeared in the buzz. A man’s yelp. A head of fiery red hair dropped to the ground, swarmed by fists. Shop. Blazed through the door, items crashing to the floor, a table newly cleared. Hoisted up. Beads of sweat. 

    “Daria!” I thrashed against the hands. I was held firm, pinned on the table. Red first aid kit. Bandaids spilled. Aspirin clashed to the tile. Gauze pressed to my chest, pain like glass shards ripping my heart. I couldn’t see. The world started to blur. Eyes wouldn’t focus. Hair tickled my clavicle, a worker bending to examine the wound.

    “Bloedgroep? Bloedgroep?” I blinked, squeezing my eyes tight. It sounded like  “blood group,” should I respond? Would human medical treatment even work on me? It was hard to tell what memories were real and what memories were shown to me in a slideshow by my mother to give the illusion that I’d always lived in Ohio. Had I ever truly been injured before my life plunged into this insanity?

    The mass of people pressed gauze to my wound, dialed numbers furiously on their phones, asked me questions in Afrikaans that I had no clue how to answer. Through the cacophony of noise I heard a voice,

    “Selene, what’s your blood type?” I froze. My arms fell from where they were thrashing. I knew that voice. It was a voice that had been embarrassed in the desert, torn with emotion, a voice that now sounded pleasant, with a soft British accent and a steady rhythm. Talia? 

    “A-negative?” I could just barely recall my mother…well, not my mother…Melissa? Telling me that I had a rare blood type, one that didn’t really match up with my mother and father’s. No wonder. They weren’t my family at all, just some greedy farmers with a freaky desire to control something beyond themselves. How could I never have asked them about it? My blood type, my affinity for the night where they were morning people, my obviously different appearance, resembling neither one of my “parents” in any way. 

    “Selene? Come back to me! Come on!” I snapped open my eyes again. They felt like they had immense weights pressing down on them, trying to drag me into unconsciousness. Above me, through a curtain of loose-hanging blond hair, Talia wriggled her fingers. 

    Little droplets of water splashed on my nose. I blinked harder, the shock of cold water stinging my skin. I felt her other hand on my wrist, then I convulsed. A sharp pain stung my skin! Throwing my hips off the table, I yelped. A bolt of electricity! Did she just…shock me? A fizzling warmth climbed through my body, activating every nerve, buzzing and thrumming with power.

    The fog hanging over my thoughts began to recede, alternating shocks of cold water dribbling down my nose and electricity fizzing in my veins. Alertness began to return as the jolts of energy spiked in my blood. 

    “Where’s Daria?” I felt another shock, Talia’s eyes intently focused on the crowds of people unrolling gauze and conversing with authorities. I felt myself lifted off the table. Canvas under my dress. A stretcher. “Talia! Talia!!!” My throat ripped with the words.
    “Shhhh…” Talia ducked close to my ear, waddling alongside the stretcher. The world swayed, a jangle of bells as we passed through the door frame, chest stubbornly throbbing from the wound. 

    “Kenna’s with her, she’ll go to the same hospital as you. Try to use your power if you can…I think it helps heal you,” she paused, climbing in alongside me as I was lifted into the ambulance. After the doors shut, she hastily added, “I don’t know for sure though.” Like if my power didn’t do anything to help, she would feel guilty. As though I would feel betrayed if her advice didn’t work. 

    I would’ve smirked at that. But my head pounded. My eyes stung from the harsh fluorescents. Blasts of noise seemed to blare from every orifice it could: sirens, heart monitors, voices, wheels, even the buzz of the filaments in the overhead lights. I barely grasped what Talia was talking about when she continued, 

     “But you have to try. Keep it contained, close, maybe restrict it to your fist. You already stand out enough with…” she gestured vaguely to my silver dress, wet with blood, sea spray, and vomit from rough days on the ship. “Lord knows you don’t need any of the suspicion that inevitably comes with the usual…you know, harnessing starlight, summoning beams, drawing an aura of pure silver or gold around you like an angel, the like.” I registered the words, dimly. Her shocks were wearing off, the raindrops had become calming rather than startling.

    My head lolled to the side; even her soft whispers had begun to grate my ears. I wanted so badly to fall asleep, drift through the yawning doorway and into the darkness. They must be feeding me a sedative through the IV…so that was what the prick was from? But I let the light flow to my limp palm. Visualizing the stars through the ceiling, beyond the clouds and daylight, beyond the atmosphere, beyond our Earth. Blazing somewhere high in the heavens, glittering, burning, yearning for my call. I was ready to receive it. But there was one thing I had to do first. One question looming in my mind.

    “Talia?” She was at my side immediately.

    “Yes?”

    “What were all those people gathered around?” I saw something flash in her eyes. Her arms tensed, she stepped back slightly, knitting her brows. With a sigh, she gripped my hand and said,

    “It was Zara. She was struck and…” she took in a deep breath, a shuddering breath, a sad breath. “She let go and I, I–Zara’s gone, Selene.” I stared at her, blankly, unable to register her words. Daria had been gone too, but the way she said it, “she let go…”

    Sensing my hesitancy, Talia sighed.

    “The doctors will do everything they can for you and Daria. But Zara didn’t have a chance. She’s dead, Selene. And she’s not coming back.”

    Writer's Wednesday!

    Writer’s Wednesday! Elementals–Afterlife

    AutumnB17

    On a day like that, it was impossible to feel like everything is okay. Some people have an unfaltering belief in the positive outlook: rainbows always come after the rain–as long as you let the sun shine through.

     I used to think that way too, when I was Mira Casse, a starry-eyed teen with a passion for the sky. But there was no silver lining for the cloud that had eclipsed my life. I had been as normal as I ever could have been, a month ago. Now I was huddled in an alley, clutching the limp form of a girl I’d barely known. 

    I shuddered, letting the tears spring to my eyes. I hadn’t cried in a long time, it seemed, and with every petty little heartbreak I’d endured in my high school years, the cries had felt freeing–as though the warm torrent of tears that slid down my cheeks carried all my sorrow with it, lightening the swirling storm in my heart.

    This cry was different. It was a cruel, empty, shameful act of cowardice in the face of death. It was trying to hide from my grief, wake up from this enduring nightmare of the last few weeks. I cradled in my arms a lifeless prodigy that I had barely known, a sweet Italian girl without the slightest inkling of how vast her powers truly were. A heavenly embodiment of the sea with endless possibilities. Killed within the course of a few days. A wound from a ship. An arrow to the back. Daria was dead.

    Zara had taken off with determination in her gaze, chasing after a young woman, screaming after her insistently and leaving us in the dust. Talia said the name was that of her long-lost sister: the one who had disappeared years ago after running away to Kommetjie… the one that had never come back. Zara was gone, too. A poor girl with a missing sister and a tortured past, condemned by her whole village for trying to help them. Knowing Artemis’s games, the “sister” Zara was chasing was nothing but an illusion to lure her away. If that was true, as I suspected it was? Zara was dead.

    Curled in a dank, fetid alley, I willed death to come take away my suffering. Kenna and Talia sat on either side of me, leaning their heads on my shoulders. Kenna conjured sparks and swirling ashes in the air, tinkering with the curling threads of fire that hung suspended in her control. 

    Her left knee jittered, body wrought with tension and unasked questions that I could sense on her tongue. How much longer will we rest? The mercenaries were without a doubt nearby, canvassing the area. But I was thankful she didn’t ask the question. I couldn’t imagine moving right now, taking a step forward and running away again. Running away was what had brought me here, to the stench of death congealing on the humid air, to the darkest shame of my heart: I wished I was human. 

    Somewhere in me I felt Mira Casse, striding boldly down the dark hall, smelling the scent of cherry blossoms and fresh grass wafting in from the open window. A beautiful high school girl dreaming under a blanket of stars, gazing up at the brilliant Ohio sky and yearning to be a part of the vast unknown of the heavens. Human. Loving and living, heart cracking and mending, carefree and vivacious under the blazing starlight. I wanted more than this twisted, power-filled life that I was trapped in. I wanted more for all of us.

    I was going to be an astronomer. Kenna could have been a firefighter or a military officer, Daria a marine biologist. Talia might have become a lead meteorologist, growing out of her shyness and lighting up the screen. Zara could’ve been an environmental biologist, studying the natural world and the Earth. Now two were dead. Three quivering in an alley, waiting on a command from some unknown force, longing for an apparition to show us the way, to drink some honeycomb elixir and let myself fade away into the stars. 

    Footsteps sounded, not far away. The drum of sound grew with each passing moment, a heavy tread like a large man in boots. I could feel myself floating away, detaching from reality. Kenna’s hands grabbed me roughly, pulling on me. I cried out, blind with pain, batting away her hand. 

    “Leave me! Run! I can’t leave her alone.” Clutching Daria to my chest, I stroked her hair, tears spilling over the girl that I had barely known. Kenna shook me with increased fervor, urging me with words that I couldn’t hear. The world was a haze of tears, a meaningless blur of voices and dead eyes. 

    “Selene, she’s dead! We have to go!” Talia insisted, her clear, frantic voice cutting through my hysteria. More than anything, I yearned for Mira Casse. I wanted to be a human; I never wanted to run again. Let Artemis kill me. Let me drown in my sorrow and join Daria. Perhaps I’d meet my mother again, face framed with blonde locks. Braiding my hair, gazing at me with pure, human pride. My beautiful angel. One day you will be among the stars, where you belong. But we need your light on Earth, Mira. Let it glow. 

    I had failed her, the mother who had never truly been my mother at all. Kenna squeezed my hand, as though in a silent goodbye. She knew better than anyone that I wouldn’t move unless she physically dragged me away. That wasn’t what I wanted, they knew. Embers and Storm, bright-eyed, able to change the world. My time was up.

    As the pounding footsteps grew ever louder, the two girls slipped out of the alley, disappearing from sight. On cue, a man thundered into the dank sliver of space. Stark red hair, ghostly pale skin sprayed with freckles, a silver knife clutched threateningly in his palm. Hugging Daria close, I closed her eyes with a butterfly-soft touch and waited to die.

    🌊Daria

    Daria had always imagined life after death a certain way, the way that had been ingrained in her head since the moment she was born. Good souls go to heaven. Sinners go to hell. 

    Heaven, a billowing landscape of pillowy white clouds, beams of golden sun streaming through the puffy wisps. Everything you’d ever loved and lost, your family you’d never gotten to meet, or the ones that had gone too soon. A childhood dog trotting energetically with a bone, youthful as a small puppy and as soft as the cotton-candy clouds themselves. The chiming of the Saint Maria Assunta church bells filling the air with warm, joyful chords. 

    Hell, a fiery chasm of endless tortures. Sinners on every level uniquely punished by twisted demons. The flap of leathery winds. A stench of brimstone and diseased breath.

    Instead, Daria found herself in midnight’s blank grasp. Nothingness. Empty black as far as the eye could see, neither hot nor cold, but an uncomfortable sensation of…no sensation at all. There was no tether to the outside world, nothing but the faint sound of lapping water somewhere in the blackness.

    “Mom? Are you out there?” she asked the dark in her native language, hopeful phrases rolling off her tongue. Daria expected at least an echo of her words, to hear the sweet Italian syllables cascade into the air. It was as though her sound was immediately quenched, a towel thrown down onto a bass drum.

     Disappointment swelled in her unembodied conscience. Water. Just water, a soothing lap like the waves on the shore outside her Positano home. She should have known better than to hope: for a spirit-filled heaven with soaring white clouds, for her late mother’s warm touch and sweet bakery smell, for anything more out of death but an infinite oblivion. 

    Out of the dark, a great sob came to her, nothing like the church bells from her seaside home. Selene, she’s dead! We have to go! 

    A voice! Was it her own thought? Surely not; it was a voice like raindrops on the roof, rapid, frantic. Was that what the angels sounded like?

    Daria wished she could feel something: the blissful warmth she imagined of heaven…or even the fiery cold of hell. Instead, she felt no sensation at all: no underlying feel of being. It was a sensory-deprivation chamber, a distant sound of lapping water and screams and pounding feet. Of ragged breath now, a distant voice coming from all sides then not at all.

    Was she being held in the arms of her mother, awoken from a nightmare that had lasted years and years? A nightmare where she set off to work one day, still smelling like pastries from the day before? A nightmare where Daria’s mother never returned except for a motionless body in a casket, a dismal funeral on a rainy day? Or was she laying on a coroners’ table, being examined for her strange powers, poked and prodded and shocked with electrons?

    All she knew was that this was the end of the line, and…somehow, she knew that she was being held. There was no sensation. No contact. Just a gut feeling. As though from an echo in a deep, dark cave, Daria could hear the sounds of sobs, gasping breath. 

    Someone out in the other world was crying for her, someone she knew if only in a dream. She wished she could tell the voice that she wasn’t in pain. Memories of an arrow rose and fell, crumbling in the oblivion. Barely an inkling anymore…but the person sounded as though their heart was breaking, as though watching whatever was left of Daria hurt her soul. She wished she could tell the voice she wasn’t in pain there.

    There was no suffering, no joy either: she supposed that was all she could ask of Death. Greedy of her to think that her failure to live would be rewarded by clouds and a smiling face. 

    Suddenly, something called to her. She felt a tugging at her thoughts, a power, a strength–water? An invisible tether snapped into creation, an olive branch extended from her to the other side. 

    They weren’t by the sea anymore; the water that called her had to be tears. Selfish. Selfish! But Daria grabbed onto them, pulling the droplets through into the nothingness. A drop of water splatted on her nose.

    Wait! She was dead. Yes. Certainly. Embroiled in darkness, she was dead–so why did she feel the splat of water hitting her skin? 

    A feeling! 

    A sensation!

    A state of being was forming in the dark. More water called. She received it, pulling it closer, hearing a vacuum suction as she dragged each tear through. Another splat, another…baffling. Baffling! But unmistakable water…

    “Mamma? Mamma, mi senti?” Mom? Mom, can you hear me? The words echoed this time, the darkness accepting them rather than suffocating them. Still no response–her heart dropped with realization: the tears I am summoning are not the tears of an angel, of my mother bringing me closer to Heaven. They are the tears of a human. I’m being pulled back! 

    Abruptly she stopped seeking out the water. It hovered somewhere out of reach, itching for her call. She could feel her nose now, wrinkling as the droplet slid down her cheek and slithered down her throat. 

    Was this what she wanted? Each tear Daria pulled through to that side–death’s side–was strengthening her tether to the living world. Was she prepared to go back to pain, to the prick of the arrow throbbing in her back, to the metallic gush of blood through her tattered black swimsuit? 

    This should be easy, she thought, wrinkling her nose, still trying to spread the state of being down to her legs, her toes, her fingertips. 

    It should be an easy choice: seize the connection her power brought, spring forward into life to help that suffering voice. But–in a way–the nothingness was comfort. It was uniquely sweet in its blankness. 

    She was mortally wounded in the living world–flesh torn by a wooden hull, skin pierced by an arrow. But there, floating in the black…she was nothing. No pain, but at the hefty price of no pleasure. Daria was willing to pay that price.

    Just as she began to let go of the sensations of face and nose and teardrops, just as she was ready to hope for a heaven beyond this black, she heard a voice. 

    Take me. Kill me if you want to, I won’t fight! I’m done running from Artemis for my choice…I’ll never be ready to live forever. But if Daria…Her face contorted, startled to hear her name in the disembodied words…if Daria, an innocent, had to die for the Huntress’ agenda, it seems right that I die too before she can torture me for her own gain. I will take every opportunity to steal her pleasure. I will relish the fact that I will die here, with Daria. So do it. Do it! Kill me. Because I will not leave this alley alive.

    Daria didn’t even have to make the choice. She didn’t have to know who it was, the voice on the other side of the void. She called every single drop of water from the girl’s tears, every ounce of humidity from the living world, every essence of being from the place where she lay dead.

    In a rush of light, life sprang forward to her body. She felt the thud of her heart in my chest. Her eyes snapped open, tears splashing across her skin, tangling themselves in her hair. An odor foul and bloody as death itself washed through her nostrils. 

    Selene was above her, midnight hair tickling her chin, face gaunt yet strikingly gorgeous in its moondust pallor. Daria’s side throbbed, her back throbbed, her head throbbed, and yet when she sucked in a breath, hope flooded her now-beating heart. She was alive. And she wasn’t going to let Selene die.

    Writer's Wednesday!

    Writer’s Wednesday! 🌠Without a Trace

    AutumnB17

    “Without a trace.” These were the words that rang in the ears of the people, that sliced on the wind with whispers and ruffled the wise willows (who seemed to droop lower and lower with each time her name was spoken.) Pictures plastered the windows. Amber alerts screeching their discordant call into the night air. One name spat like a curse, one woman sobbing it, the whole world buzzing about it. One name that swept through the school hallways like a tornado, leaving silence and tension in its wake. One name that rolled through the rural Ohio town like a ghostly fog creeping over the fields.“Mira. Casse.” 

    It was the last thing Melissa Casse would hear before it happened. It was a night like every other before it, deathly silent except the whisper of the wind and the chatter of crickets roaming the moonlit fields. Selene’s captor stood in the light of the open window, looking out across the glittering grasses.


    “Mira. Casse.” A detached voice whispered into the night, a voice that had plagued her nightmares, haunting every waking moment. A second later, a silver blur screamed down from the clouds. The frail blonde woman felt a prick on her chest, a burst of pain like a bee sting amplified a hundred times. She shrieked, placing her pale fingers to her chest, feeling the wetness there. 

    Blood. The silver glinted in the light as she yanked it out of her chest, crimson spurting onto the wood floor in gushing drops. Rattling moans escaped her chest, the pain starting to jab at her. Eyes wide, her knees buckled.

    “Melissa? Honey, are you okay? Let me in!” His voice was rough with worry, each muscle of his sun-weathered skin taut as a tightrope. She could imagine him outside the door-  his head in his hands, dark hair ruffled wildly, dark shadows lurking under his eyes like a brand of the many sleepless nights. 

    “Melissa, please. Please, don’t do this. What’s wrong? Let me in!” Silence clung to the air for a second, shattered almost instantaneously by a screeching sob. Pure pain, the rawest heartbreak, the hottest fire, the iciest cold- bottled up into an ear splitting scream. James pounded the wood. Crack. Crack. Crack. CRACK. Not enough. Not enough. Melissa cried out again, thrashing as her heart pounded brokenly. Panic surged in white-hot waves, crashing through her veins. 

    She had to get to the window, had to lock the latch and get away from this place as soon as possible. Mira. Casse. Artemis’s chilly laugh echoed on the night as though mocking her futile attempts to move. Crimson blossomed over her white nightgown as she covered her ears, slicking her pale fingertips with blood like Sleeping Beauty with a lot of curiosity but no prince. Melissa dragged herself an inch closer, the little metal latch glinting in the moonlight. 

    Sharp, stabbing pain rocketed through her, vision blurring into a foggy haze with each little movement. Everything was blurry now. Swishing white curtains like vengeful phantoms. Stars in the sky shone painfully bright like torchlights bobbing in a dank black cave. Her cotton nightgown stained with red, creeping over the fabric like weeds in an untended garden. The silver arrow protruding from her chest was like an exclamation mark misplaced at the end of a grim sentence.

    Crack. Crack. CRACK. CRACK. “Melissa, I’m coming, hold on!” Blackness began to creep in around the edges. The frail blonde woman slammed the window shut, stinging pins and needles pricking her skin. Just as she reached for the latch, so tantalizingly close, the window flew open with a gust of wind, knocking her back onto the floor. THUD. Pain crackled through her skull, a spark bursting in a blazing inferno.

    Standing there, wreathed in moonlight, was Artemis in all her glory. Auburn hair loose around her shoulders, hazel eyes burning with fury like hot embers in her pale face. Her stark white toga fluttered in the breeze as she reached for her quiver. Melissa tensed, braced for another shot, but nothing came. Artemis plucked a broken chain from the leather bag, tossing it at the blood-stained woman. Mira’s star necklace. 

    “What have you done to her?” Melissa sobbed, blonde strands of hair whipping in the wind that picked up with each passing second. The goddess’s face was cold, emotionless, missing any humanity. The glint of mercy and love she had seen and nurtured in Selene wasn’t there in Artemis. Washed away with the countless centuries… or perhaps it had never been there at all. 

    “Nothing, Mrs. Casse. Nothing at all… yet. Perhaps you should ask her what she did to me.” Venom overflowed from the icy words, a fury so cold and deep it burned away the melodic, silvery sweetness of her voice. “You changed her, Melissa. Turned her weak-willed and sensitive. I could have fixed her, could have hardened her with the passing centuries. If that had been all the damage you’d done. But it wasn’t, was it?” 

    Mrs. Casse moaned, visions of Mira’s sparkling midnight blue eyes dancing across her mind’s eye, memories of family breakfasts, looking lovingly on as her “daughter” scampered onto the high school bus in jeans and flannel, completely oblivious that she had lived in golden gowns for most of her life until Melissa had taken her away. Crickets’ chirps cried in the golden fields, interrupting the still night air. 

    “It wasn’t was it?” Artemis asked vehemently, trembling from head to toe. Her silver heels jittered on the floor, an uneven, jittery tap like a soundtrack of insanity. The mellifluous, crooning voice of the huntress was gone, scorched away like green grass burning to a crisp under a desert sun. Melissa groaned, the arrow throbbing in her chest just a fraction of an inch from her heart.

     “Was it? Was it?” Artemis shrieked, her heels tapping more violently with each passing second, her pale face flushing a furious pink. Crack. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. The wood of the door splintered, beginning to give way. She could see a glimpse of her husband’s sweat-beaded face through the cracks, bronze cheeks flushed red with effort, eyes wide with desperation. Melissa whispered a silent prayer that he would have the strength. Hope rose in her chest like a phoenix unfurling its mighty wings. 

    “No. It wasn’t the only thing I did. But I’m glad for the things I did. You made her cold, heartless, almost beyond saving. I loved her, I helped her, I tried to give her humanity and mercy-” 

    “Ha!” Artemis’s lips curled into a twisted grin. “Mercy is for the weak. You did the damage that I couldn’t repair. Not only did you steal her from me, wipe her memory, pit her against me, you did the worst thing of all. You made her human.” Before you could blink, Artemis drew her silver bow and flicked her finger. Melissa felt a sharp prick of pain and saw her husband’s tortured face looming above her. Artemis was gone, disappeared without a trace. The last thing she felt was the sticky blood on her fingertips where the second silver arrow had directly pierced her heart. Mira. Casse. 

    *****************

    I jolted awake, gasping for air. My heart throbbed, pulsating with a sharp pain that felt like something lodged directly in my chest. Clutching my throat, I ran a hand over the star shaped scar where my necklace had sat for so many years. 

    “Where are we?” I asked, glancing around the deck. Daria’s puddles of sticky crimson blood had dried by now, leaving ominous brown stains clinging the the wood like an omen of disaster; the cloying metallic scent still clung to the air, intermingling with the tangy sea salt breeze. 

    “From what I’ve heard, we’re nearing the Cape of Good Hope. There’s buzz that they came to Africa to hunt down Earth, but are concerned by a new article that was released about us.” Daria paused, widening her eyes in a shockingly good imitation of innocence as one of the mercenaries stalked by. Grumbling along, he barely gave a second glance to us. Obviously the crew didn’t seem to think we were much of a threat (with the enchanted bonds and lack of substantial food). They’re probably right, I thought with frustration, staring helplessly at Artemis’s burly mercenaries conversing on the bow. 

    “Crescent Cunningham, a news reporter from Manchester-” Kenna’s head shot up like a bullet, tendrils of dark brown hair swirling around her shoulders like Medusa’s snakes.  

    “Manchester?” The word flew out of her mouth like a dart, so fast it was almost hard to tell if it was a question. Something about the feral look in her eyes made me cringe back, as though shrinking myself down could save me from Kenna’s glare. I had never seen her coal black eyes burn so bright. The ropes around her wrists hissed, sizzling violently like an egg slammed to the sidewalk on a hot day.

    “Yes,” Daria cleared her throat anxiously. “She’s from the Manchester Post. It’s something about our disappearance. She thinks we’re witches.” Her voice fell to a whisper on the last word, face crumpling as she put a hand to her anklet. It was adorned with a little golden cross. This power she was given must seem very unholy to her… The thought that our gift was unnatural sent shivers down my spine. It would take years for her to come to terms with it, let alone the fact that the Olympians existed, just barely out of sight her whole life. I pushed the thought aside. This was no place to console her. 

    Kenna drew her knees to her chest, lip trembling with fury or grief- I couldn’t tell. Her bonds hissed angrily, charring black with each second. Out of the blue, it hit me. My heart pounded as I took in her knitted brows and tense shoulders. This just might work.

    “Your school probably thinks you’re an arsonist. Don’t you think? They hear the accounts of you murdering a man, exploding in a ball of fire. An article about you on the run with other delinquents? They must think that you finally snapped,” I said lightly, sprinkling in some snark on a few words like an exclamation mark punctuating an angry sentence. Murdering. Delinquents. Snapped. Daria looked at me in alarm, mouthing a silent warning. I ignored her, smiling as Kenna clenched her fists, dark eyes scrunching at the corners. 

    “Manchester, your hometown. Imagine how shocked they were, how disgusted they were to hear about you. A witch. I bet your brother can’t even walk through the hall without whispers and laughs trailing in his wake. Will, was it?” Guilt twinged in my heart as the words hung in the air, my heart strings plucking a discordant twang. It was working. Her coal eyes smoldered with intensity, furious tears dripping down her tan cheeks. Frayed black strands of rope were falling away slowly, hissing like an angry cat. Daria glanced at the charred threads then back at me, understanding lighting her eyes. 

    “Stop. Now.” Kenna hissed through clenched teeth. I conjured up my most venomous smirk, suppressing the disgust and guilt that roiled in my gut. You have to do this. We have a chance. My lips were stretched so wide my cheeks stung; I felt like the Cheshire Cat lurking smugly in the dark woods.

    “Oh, wait. I forgot something, didn’t I? Don’t you think Charles would be upset too?” Her eyes glowed hot. The rope curled away, threads blackening quicker and quicker with each word. The smile that curled my lips felt wrong, twisted, demonic. It was necessary. I tried to think of happy things as I braced myself for the next sentence, but all I could think about was how merciless I sounded. How… inhuman. Like Artemis. I steeled myself with an achy breath. 

    “Ah, but he can’t be, can he.” My smile was pained, teeth gritted as I forced out the words. “Because you killed him.” A single, silent second passed, a second that felt like an eternity. Then she exploded. Fire burst from her fingertips, ravaging her bonds in a foul swoop of flame! Kenna lurched for me, a blur of flying hair and clenched fists. Charred ropes fell from her wrists.

    “It was an accident and you know it! You sick, twisted, lying-” She screamed, too consumed in fury to finish.Within seconds I was pinned to the ground, Daria frantically holding Kenna back as she threw herself forward. Fire licked my skin, searing pain rocketing across my arms. Then it all stopped. Kenna froze in place, her furious face smoothing as she looked out across the horizon. I sat up and followed her gaze. There it was. The Cape of Good Hope in all its glory. But more than that? Storm and Earth racing towards our ship in a boat. Today was the day we would escape.

    Writer's Wednesday!

    Writer’s Wednesday!🌙 Starlight Edition.

    AutumnB17
    Image from Shutterstock

    How was I supposed to know? That with all the royalty and golden light would come such pain? That the shining silver stilettos and marble pillars that stretch their stony fingers to the sky are only there to distract me from the real cost. My ignorance.

    Ignorance is not always a bad thing. No one is proud to have it, but when they lose it they want it back, crave that sweet bliss of not knowing. Not knowing pain. Suffering. Heartbreak. Sometimes I wish I could return to my ignorant, memory-wiped human form. Mira Casse, a starry-eyed high-school girl that loved the night sky and knew nothing of raw, pure pain.

    Sure, I’d had a break up, had my heart cracked a little, never quite broken and always, somehow, held together even when others fell apart. Running my fingers along the silver arms of my throne, I etched the delicate engravings with my palm, tracing patterns against the cold metal.

    Standing up, I strode gracefully over to the mirror that hung in midair, suspended by some invisible force and surrounded by a swirling vortex of in gold and deep purple hues that made the onyx frame gleam in contrast. I stared at my reflection, wondering what was wrong with me. How could some small, dark part of me yearn for humanity? Crave the blissful ignorance when I had riches unknown to a small, farm girl? Immortality? Royalty? Everlasting beauty?

    Staring into the mirror, my reflection seemed flawless, though I hadn’t slept at all during my time on Olympus after the first night and my hair hadn’t been combed since who knows how long. The intricate, twisting double braids that Artemis had done at least a week ago still hung loose around my shoulders, somehow still seeming stylishly messy instead of looking like a rat’s nest.

    My skin was ivory pale, yet my cheeks now seemed to perpetually have a rosy glow that radiated vibrance and life, the natural pinkish tone imitating the high-quality blushes girls would have spent a fortune on at my high school.

    Everlasting beauty… never aging… The thoughts were a maelstrom in my head, and a deep, unsettling apprehension clenched my gut as I realized the reflection that stared at me in the mirror would be the same in a century. Two. Three. Forever and ever, the youth and vibrance never leaving, my dark midnight blue eyes would twinkle the exact same way.

    “Hey, Selene. You look like you’re having a mid-life crisis,” I jumped at Artemis’s voice, spinning around to see her giggling at the absurdity of her comment. Life went on forever, for her. She’d never fathomed the idea of death, of letting go of immortality. Seeing the sorrow and thought on my face, she frowned, her musical, tinkling laughter ceasing abruptly.

    “What’s wron-”

    “How old are you?” I interjected, voice breaking in the middle of the sentence. Even my new, graceful goddess qualities couldn’t save me from the weight of immortality. Knitting her brows, her thin pink lips sagged into a contemplative frown.

    “I- hm. Um, probably like, a million years old, give or take a millenia. Why?” I laughed, assuming she was joking by her casual tone. Glancing behind me, I looked her straight in the eyes, expecting to see laughter in their clear hazel depths. But she was serious. Dead serious.

    Pain ricocheted through my body, every nerve convulsing with agony. Artemis looked like a teenager, youthful and vivacious, just like I was sure I would look in a thousand year’s time. My sheen of wavy black hair would never gray, the smooth pale skin of my face and cheeks would never wrinkle with the passing years. Immortal. Everlasting. Sure, it would sound great to most people. But it would never end, I would never pass on and find peace and rest in death.

    My face contorted in pain, a heavy unease settling in the perfume-thick air. Suddenly the sweet jasmine scent that clung to the air no longer seemed calming or luscious. It smelled like a prison, cloying and grotesquely honeyed.

    Artemis moved to set a concerned hand on my shoulder, and I let the warmth of her dainty fingers leach through my skin. When I looked at her, I had always seen a friend. A beautiful, confident huntress, but still a friend. Now? She seemed like a shell of a person, the glow of humanity missing from her clear hazel eyes.

    Slapping her hand away, I flung off my strappy heels, letting them slam into the cool marble floor with a thud. They would only slow me down. My feet slapped the cold, hard stone of the floor as I leapt down the steps. Relishing in the soft cottony clouds against my toes, I sprinted off into the night. Intense deja-vu struck me as I sprang from cloud to cloud, feeling so much like the dream when I had first crossed over into the heavens for the first time in my life.

    Wind whipped in my hair, and I found some twisted satisfaction in the fact that my perpetually perfect hair was now mussed and tangled. A smile spread across my lips, the pain that had plagued my thoughts dissipating into a soft euphoria. Wonders and worries whirled in my mind, but I shoved them all down, focusing all my attention on the warm summer breeze in my hair. Now was not the time for what-ifs, for thoughts of the future.

    Maybe I would return. Maybe I wouldn’t. As I jetted across the sky, I felt like a shooting star burning through the night, free and wild and passionate. As my smile grew wider and wider, I noticed the moon’s glow growing brighter along with it, beaming down on the clouds with their silvery light.

    I had always felt out-of-place, ostracized no matter where I was. And maybe I didn’t belong in Olympus or down on Earth. But I certainly felt at peace right here. Perhaps I wasn’t Mira Casse or even Selene. What I do know is that the stars grow brighter every time I’m near, and the moon waxes and wanes with my moods. Perhaps I’m not a human or a goddess. Never part of the Earth or the heavens, simply a shooting star burning through the night. Passionate. Shining. Beautiful.

    Writer's Wednesday!

    Writer’s Wednesday! Selene’s return

    AutumnB17

     Aoooh…a wolf sang into the soft summer air. I sat at the makeshift fire, watching the golden flames dance and leap, cutting through the dark void of the night. I let out a long, sweet sigh. The moon was full and brimming with silvery light; light that took over the night, illuminating every branch and making the leaves glimmer emerald in the dusk.

     It was… unnaturally full. I had been out here for months upon months and never ever had I seen such a perfect night. It was like something out of a fairytale, with the stars glimmering like crystals in the sky, and the onyx canvas of the night streaked with color.

    A glowing light danced through the clouds, a shooting star jetting through the night. It was an odd shape for a star, looking like a human figure outlined in starlight.  As it shone through the clouds, I thought that it almost looked like it was leaping from cloud to cloud.

    As I watched the brilliant spectacle, I wondered if somewhere out there, my mom was watching the same sky, thinking about me. Through the enchantment, I felt a sharp stab of bitterness deep down in my gut. Not likely. Maybe for another other mother, but not Mae. Not Mae.

    Brutal memories flashed across my mind, slicing into the peaceful night. Peeking out from behind my mother, her blocking my view and screaming in terror. A horrible, gut-wrenching scream echoing through the house. The god-awful stench drifting up and filling my nose. The stench of death. Mae rushing over to my father’s limp, unmoving figure. Slumped against the couch with a needle protruding from his arm. Shrieking into the phone, tears leaking from her eyes and coalescing as they dripped down her pale cheeks.

    A haze of sirens and ambulances, screams and hospitals. My mother’s kind blue eyes shattering like glass when she heard the news from the doctors. Husband. Dead. Overdose. A blank film glazing over her eyes, cold and emotionless. Numb.

    Squeezing my eyes shut, I shook my head. No. You can’t do this again, Kate, can’t go down that rabbit hole again. With a gasping breath, the memories fell away, down into the dark black depths of my soul, where it swirled and writhed like a beast yanking me down and groping blindly for a handhold. A memory. A person. Anything-

    Boom! I was yanked from the reverie as the sky exploded with light. The moon glowed like a beacon, shining so bright it could be mistaken for the sun.  Tiny specks of stars bursted like supernovas, and the whole world fell away. The soft crackle of the flames was instantaneously quenched, the chatter of far away crickets fading away until all that was left was the sky.

    Seconds passed. A minute. And with one final searing blast of light, the sky swirled and the stars twirled and danced, rearranging the night sky. As quickly as it had come, it went away, the dusky darkness returned, speckled with glowing constellations and streaked with colors. A mini aurora-borealis shone pink, green, and purple is the night.

    Warmth spread through my body, soft and sweet, like honey dripping over the body. I smiled up at the moon. I could barely believe my ears when a musical voice drifted through the night, one that I was sure everyone in the world could hear.

    “Welcome home, Selene, goddess of the moon and night. The night sky will never be the same.”

    **********************

    “No. No. NO!” A frail blonde woman dashed up the stairs, throwing open the bedroom door with a giant slam! She, too, from all the way in California, had heard the voice. That awful, silvery voice, sugary sweet yet powerful at the same time. A flash of light so bright it burst open the night sky.

    No, no, no. Artemis… Melissa Casse’s thoughts soured at the name. She had dreaded this moment for years, the dark what if? situation that lingered in the back of your mind, the one that you tried to push away but kept dragging you back every time.

    Stalking into the bedroom, she threw back the silken sheets with a dramatic flourish, pale hands trembling slightly. The lump in the bed that she had prayed was Mira… Melissa let out a weak whimper, thin lips quivering. A pillow. A pathetic pillow.

    The frail blonde woman let out a low, guttural growl that tore her throat. To any normal person, this would seem like a kidnapping. But Melissa knew. Selene had finally been taken away from her.

    Dashing down the hallway, images flashed across her mind.

    The first time she’d seen the young goddess soar from the heavens to Earth, a young high-school age girl with a round, pale face and wavy black hair. A brilliant white pegasus stood at her side, chomping away at the dew-speckled grass. What the…? Is that a- a- horse? With wings?!? Explanations churned in her mind, but she had always been rather simple minded. Anything that wasn’t written in a textbook might as well have been fictional.

    And when the young girl turned, Melissa saw her face and instantly froze.

    In that moment, nothing else mattered. Selene. Her breath caught in her throat. She’d studied Greek myth all her life, and Melissa knew immediately that she was in the presence of one of the most beautiful, powerful entities in the world.

    Everything about her shimmered in the moonlight, from the shine of her hair to the sparkling blue of her eyes. The decision was not a conscious one. I need her. Selene is mine. Something about possessing a divine entity, having complete control over such a beautiful person… in that moment, Melissa craved it more than anything.

    You know when you see something so perfect, so heavenly, you just yearn for it? The frail blonde woman out in the field felt it, her heart leaping with an utter need for the girl, to call her a loving name, to braid her flowing locks and see the sparkle in her midnight blue eyes.

    Call it what you wish, the simple farmer woman suddenly became a fugitive among the heavens, forever hiding out and protecting her precious “daughter”…

    Her vision was a blur as she bolted down the stairs, her satin slippers slamming the carpet. Adrenaline and panic sang in her veins, the door loomed ahead. Melissa twirled the lock, flinging open the door and kicking off her shoes.

    The emerald grass tickled her feet, droplets of dew dripping from the stems and splashing her bare toes, sending shivers up her spine. She ran and ran until she reached the field where Selene had stood, so many years ago, shimmering in the bright moonlight.

    Pain wracked her chest, slamming her tiny body so hard she fell to her knees, the cotton fabric of the nightgown soaking through to her skin. Melissa’s stomach lurched with desire so intense it could burn down the field until all that was left was a heap of charred grass.

    The stars blazed above, shining a brilliant gold. Every detail reminded her of Selene, her sweet moonbeam. Onyx black like her shining hair, stars shimmering like the passionate twinkle in her eyes, the faint, barely there silver aura that swirled around her like moonlight.

    The frail, simple woman with a simple wish lay on the ground, tears dripping like liquid diamonds down her pale face. She would never be the same. Alas, once you love an angel like Selene, there is no recovery. A wound made by a divine goddess was one that never healed.

    High above in the heavens, Selene was sleeping peacefully. And down on Earth, her captor was heartbroken. Melissa’s precious daughter would never return.

    Writer's Wednesday!

    Writer’s Wednesday… Special Lunar Edition!

    AutumnB17
    “Midnight” by Bo (my brother)

    Imagine one night, you have a dream that feels so real, it’s almost as if you are there. Like the reality fell away and the dream took its place, so vivid you can feel the emotion and taste the air on your tongue. Every smell, every texture is just as real as it is is normal life, if not more real.

    Now imagine waking up, expecting to be in your own bed, like normal. But you’re not. You’re in an entirely different place. A place you could only imagine… in your dreams.

    So let’s go back to that night one summer when one girl’s world changed for good. A teenage girl stands in front of the mirror, combing through her wavy black hair. Her midnight blue eyes twinkle as she stares at her reflection. Her eyes don’t shine like stars. No. They are the stars, lighting up the deep blue depths of her irises.

    The pale skin of her arms don’t just seem like the creamy white of the moon. They are the moon, her skin bathed in a layer of ivory moondust.

    The cascading, wavy black hair doesn’t just look like the obsidian shades of the night sky. It is the night sky, a midnight canvas threaded through with sparkling violets and strands of gold that all the girls envy and ask about; she simply replies, “That’s my natural shade.” Nobody believes her, but it’s true.

    So she stands tall in the mirror, late at night. Yet she doesn’t feel tired. She feels more alive than ever before, rejuvenated and glowing with energy and life. Sometimes the girl wonders why she feels so out-of-place and sluggish during the day, but so at ease and lively at night.

    Pushing the thought away, she reminds herself that that’s just how it always has been, since the moment she was born until that very night. That girl in the mirror is me.

    My name is Mira Casse, and I was born with the night sky in me.

    I glanced at the mirror one last time, swiping off the remainder of my cherry pink lip balm and smoothing the wrinkled fabric of my old nightgown. Turning off the harsh lights, I let the darkness flood my vision. It didn’t scare me. It never had.

    Even when I was a young girl and my friends had all been petrified of the dark, I had always welcomed the blackness, letting it wrap around me like a blanket of silence; the shadows kids were so scared of had always brought me a quiet sort of peace. Content. Tranquil. The dark is no place to cower in fear, I thought to myself as I padded down the hall, the dark is a place to dream.

    A memory surfaced. I remembered one night when I was young, this same thing, these same thoughts. A sense of deja vu dripped into my mind as I recalled the details. Walking back from the bathroom while all of the house slept, my flashlight clutched in my hand. Even my small mind knew that you should always have a flashlight. The words had been drilled into my mind by my mother. The dark is dangerous. The dark is cold. The dark is scary, Mira. Don’t ever let it take you. Now, thinking about it, I realized the words had been a warning. But I didn’t understand it. Halfway down the hall, I did what I never had even fathomed doing. I broke my mom’s most sacred rule.

    I clicked off the flashlight, letting the darkness envelop me, a dark cloth falling over me. The black hallway did not seem scary. Or cold. I knew by now that there were no monsters lurking in the shadows. The same thoughts pounded through my head. The dark is no place to cower in fear. The dark is a place to dream.

    Image from “The Best Leaders Carry Flashlights”

    Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

    -“The Old Astronomer to His Pupil”, by Sarah Williams

    Slipping into my bedroom, I felt more awake than I had all day.

    The moon was high in the dusky sky, illuminating my room with its silver light. A sweet summer breeze drifted in through the open window, and I inhaled, taking in the scent of fresh grass and cherry blossoms. Glittering stars shone through the clouds.

    Stepping away from the window, I sprawled out on the bed, letting my face sink into the pillow and feeling the world slip away into sleep…

    *****************

    Running. Running on air. My feet were moving, propelling me forward as I sprinted across the starry sky. Wispy white clouds were fuzzy against my ankles, like cotton candy on my toes. Stars shone above like brilliant beacons in the dark, so close I could almost reach out and touch them as I leapt gracefully from cloud to cloud.

    The wind whipped my inky black hair, throwing it out behind me like a banner in the breeze, so black that it stood out against the soft midnight sky. Oddly, my mind was almost completely blank. No thoughts of the ground, so far below, of the past, or future. Everything was now. Despite the void of mind, my heart guided me along the way. Though it felt like I was leaping aimlessly through the night, my heart pounded harder and harder as I ran, tugging me in the right direction.

    Like a gleaming apparition in the mist, a structure emerged from the void of the night; it sharpened in my vision as I sprinted towards it. It was a Greek-looking structure made of towering marble pillars and topped with an elaborate silver roof that shone in the ethereal glow of the moon. My whole body tingled in anticipation as I neared it, and I felt an inexplicable tug.

    Go to the temple, a voice said in my mind, like a sweet whisper in my thoughts. It pulled me forward, like a magnet to metal. Pulse flickering wildly, I could hear the hammering thud-thud of my heart pounding my ribs.

    My loose, flowing white nightgown swirled around my knees as I came to a halt, resting on the gilded steps. As soon as my foot touched the cold marble of the step, I could feel it. A change that rattled down to my core. A change that felt deeper than the dream.
    My heart swelled, light spilling into my soul. Happiness. Peace. Glory. Though I was certain I’d never seen this place before, it felt… right. Like I belonged here, more than any other place in the world. Looking down at my hands, I saw that they were glowing, my whole body surrounded by a shimmering silver aura. A smile spread across my lips as I reached down and was greeted… not by the flimsy cotton nightgown, no.

    My hand was met by the soft slide of silk beneath my fingertips. With a grin as big as the moon above, my eyes devoured the sight of my dress. It was a cascading golden gown that shimmered as I turned my hips. The bodice hugged my curves, but not in a strangulating way, no. In a way that felt like I was wrapped in starlight; both hot and cold at the same time, bringing a pleasant tingling sensation through my body.

    My hair was still loose and flowing, but as my pale fingers ran through it, the windblown, ratty tangles were gone. In their place was a sheen of shiny, jet-black hair with gentle waves that framed my face. A wreath of golden stars sat atop my head like a crown.

    I walked slowly up the steps, noticing the strappy silver heels that now held the feet that were bare a second before. The pavillion was bare except for a king-size bed in the corner, and a plush throne in the center. It had a metallic black velvet seat, and a towering silver back, criss-crossed with gold. Engraved into the metal were colorful planets and constellations. A throne fit for a queen. A queen of the night.

    A smiling girl stood in the center with outstretched arms, a slim, pale figure with elegantly styled auburn hair. She wore a bow slung across her back. Though I had never seen her before, visions of her flashed across my eyes like forgotten memories. Before my brain could even take her in, I ran towards her and flung myself into her arms, hugging her tightly.

    Warmth spread through my body, a happy tear dripped from my eyes. The name left my lips before my mind could even process how I knew it.

    “Artemis!” I cried out, tears running in rivulets down my pale cheeks. I’d never seen her before, and yet I knew her name. This girl in the dream felt like… family. Memories flooded my mind, of us laughing together, frolicking across the midnight sky, Artemis shooting down a star and holding it in the air, suspending it in mid-air.
    Of her taking out a silver chain with a glass bubble in the center and diffusing the star so that the glowing light was encapsulated in the glass. I felt my clavicle, felt the silver necklace that I always wore around my throat. Looking at it, the star in the glass pulsing and glowing gold, then back at the girl.

    Artemis. My best friend. When we finally pulled away, she smiled at me with the deepest joy. Her silvery voice rang out into the night….

    “Welcome home, Selene. Welcome to your kingdom.”

    ***************

    I woke up with a groan. Wow, what a wonderful dream. I need to write that down… I thought groggily, scrunching my brow and trying to clear the haze. I stretched a hand out to grab the water on my nightstand… and I was met with air. The knotted wood of the nightstand was nowhere to be found.

    My eyes snapped open, and I screamed at the sight. The ceiling above me was not my room’s lilac painted ceiling. It was silver. Gleaming. Shiny. Silver. Sheets flew everywhere as I  jolted out of bed, gazing around in disbelief.

    The girl from my dream lounged on the arm of the throne, lazily eating a stack of pancakes. Climbing out of bed, I instantly shivered at the cold marble beneath my feet. A pair of strappy silver heels sat beside the bed, and I slipped them on warily. I went to pinch myself, thinking, There’s no way this is real. I must be dreaming…

    And was met by silky golden fabric of the gown, barely wrinkled by my slumber. I pinched myself nonetheless. The bite of pain made me wince. Blinking furiously, to my disbelief, everytime I opened my eyes the scene stayed the same.

    I wasn’t dreaming. This was real. Undeniably real.

    “Um, Artemis?” The girl looked up. “Where am I?”

    “Isn’t it obvious? Your palace! Your home!” I shook my head furiously.

    “No… I- what about my house? My room? My parents?” A sad look crossed her face, and she ran a pale hand through her hair.

    “How to even explain it… Mira, your name isn’t Mira Casse. It’s Selene. And that wasn’t your home, either,” she set the plate down. “You see, Selene… this is your true home. Up here, in the sky. You were kidnapped as a child and brought down to Earth to be raised by a mortal family. Don’t you see? They tried to keep you away from it! The sky, the night. Didn’t you ever wonder why you felt so out-of-place? Odd? Like no matter how hard you tried, you always came back to the moon. Always felt at peace in the dark and at night.”

    Furrowing my brow, I held my head in my hands, yanking out a strand of inky black hair and wincing at the bite of pain. No matter how hard I thought, she was right. It all made sense. How I never looked up when people called my name. My looks, how they reflected the night sky perfectly. My comfort in the dark.

    “But… I thought that was a dream!” I exclaimed. She smiled sympathetically, a look that said, There’s so much you need to know.

    “It was a dream. But I finally had enough power to reach out and guide you through the dream realm, bringing you here. As soon as your foot crossed the threshold, you entered reality. You became yourself. The true, unrestrained version.” My head was spinning. Everything was turned upside-down. Everything I had known to be true had been a lie. My family. My identity. Even my name.

    “So if I’m not Mira Casse, then who am I?” Artemis grinned, thin pink lips curling up in a smile. Her hazel eyes lit up like beacons, outshining the sun that hung high in the sky.

    “You are Selene. Goddess of the moon and the night.”