The Rise of the Dark Sun

Chapter III

I remembered being a really small girl. I had always listened to my parents and obeyed authority. I didn't really know any other way. Whenever I had asked my parents about what I had been like when I was younger, they never really gave me an answer, they just sort of answered my question with a new one. Well Lux, what do you remember? It always irritated me, because I didn't want to hear about things I had already known. It was almost as if my parents didn't want me to remember who I was when I was small. The first thing that could really pop into my head from an incident that occurred earliest in my childhood was being bullied in school or being daring with Ava. To be honest, I didn't even remember when I had met her. She had just always been in my life, as far as I had known. Our parents hadn't been friends or anything, Ava and I were always together.

I was with Ava the day that her mother died. We had been so young, and that was when we were able to determine our friendship would be eternal. Her parents had fought before, and that had even been expected. Ava's father had been such an angry person, and he always took it out on his family. Ava had been forced to be silent about what had happened, as well as me. The day had been so disturbing that we both had spent so much time trying to forget. And eventually, we just stopped talking about it all together. Ava's mother had been very important to her. She always listened, and she always helped. Her mother was beautiful, and Ava looked just like her. It was exactly why her father despised her so much.

With Ava's parents, it was easy to question why a man with the power of violence would fall in love with a woman with the power to heal. It was a constant battle inside of Ava, and it drove her crazy. She didn't want people knowing about her powers because she knew the bruises her father gave her could easily be recreated in her own hands and passed on to someone else. It was also easy to question why Ava wouldn't just heal herself when she did get beaten. The answer was simply that one could not use their own powers to benefit themselves. Most wouldn't try in the first place, because they had never thought to do it before. That's why it's nearly impossible to control my thoughts or to understand my past.

I wanted to find a way to remember it all. I wanted to find a way to see myself differently than what everyone else had seen me as. I was just a powerful girl, right? And what did my powers even mean to me? I was just Lux Kendall, an innocent eighteen-year-old girl who had never had a fault in her life that was worth remembering. But that's what got me; that's what bothered me. I felt I had been manipulated. I felt that I had been forced to forget about something in my childhood, and though it would be easy and reasonable to question why, I didn't. If I had wanted to be honest with myself, I had already suspected the truth.

I had been a young girl the last time the third sun had risen. And although I had been so young, my age wouldn't have stopped the Mazmurox for seeking my powers because I was so different. I had always thought that my powers were ordinary, it was just me who wasn't. The way people watched me, talked to me, and acted with me had to be so much more than some powers that were eventually going to fade away with age. It was just bearing those last years until my twentieth birthday that people had been watching. People had been wondering what would happen to me. I suppose I felt it so much that I started to wonder myself. I hadn't been sure if the Mazmurox had come for me or not when I was small because I couldn't remember. But when I thought hard about it, it seemed like the perfect thing to make me forget.

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I opened my eyes uneasily, squinting at the dim light seeping through the holes on my curtains. It was earlier than when I usually woke up, but I had been up now. I laid there for a few moments, counting my ribs with my fingers, tracing my collarbones and hips. I even felt my pointy elbows and shoulders. I wasn't supposed to look this way, and I tried to hide it with bigger clothes. I had no reason to be so skinny; my mother was able to provide plenty of food for our family. I just had no desire to eat it. Every day, it made my brother angry that I would not eat. He didn't understand. He said I was beautiful.