𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐋 彡 [v. neil] [✔]

𝔬𝔫𝔢!

✧･ﾟ: 𝔳𝔢𝔫𝔲𝔰 𝔦𝔫 𝔯𝔢𝔱𝔯𝔬𝔤𝔯𝔞𝔡𝔢!

1969

A busy Sunday in the Naderi household consisted of the pot filled with water on the stove boiling over because no one was supervising it and a jumbled mess of rambunctious screeches from the little children running around the low-cost apartment in the heart of Brooklyn. The Big Apple was always a dream to live in for all immigrants alike and it was no different from the Naderi's. Having come from Egypt, Karim and Yasmine Naderi understood the importance of having rightful opportunities which they never received in their home country.

The young couple left the country with one suitcase each and a few hundred dollars just to experience bigger and hopefully better things in the glorious United States. And while the couple understood after a few years that they most likely wouldn't achieve the idyllic and overly stereotypical two-story suburban home wrapped around with a white picket fence, they both made sure to raise their children to become successful so that one day they could have that beautiful two-story home as first-generation Americans.

A very heartfelt story juxtaposed by a very energetic eight-year-old girl who was currently preparing to jump onto her big brother's back in order to tackle him so he would give back the toy which he took from underneath the girl's bed. And within the snap of a finger, little Nadia Naderi launched herself onto her nine-year-old brother's back and successfully brought him to the ground whilst a pained grunt escaped the boy's mouth.

Omar tried desperately to army crawl away from his ferocious kid sister, but it was no use. Nadia held the boy back and continuously started to shake his upper body which was still planted on the cold floor while yelling at him to give her back the toy in question. Nadia's wild curls flew every which way like some type of feral child and her screams of demand were the ones to snap her father out of his thoughts and make him look up from the newspaper he was reading. The older gentleman realized that the pot on the stove was overflowing when he heard the sizzle of the fire and water mixing. He uncrossed his legs as if he was going to stand, but instead stayed seated. He looked at the wall directly in front of him and called for his wife to deal with the mess in the kitchen.

Yasmine huffed as she hurried out of the bathroom and slammed the door behind her petite frame. The middle-aged woman grumbled to herself about not even being able to fix her makeup and look pretty for the upcoming dinner which she was preparing. As Yasmine trudged through the living she sent her husband a sour look that was meant to tell Karim that he could've easily taken the pot off the stove or turned the heat down. And when the woman saw her two little ones fighting on the floor, she made it her mission to pry Nadia off Omar's back and silence the both of them with a warning look.

Yasmine leaned down, firmly gripped her daughter's sides, and in one fluid motion, ripped the girl off her brother's back. Nadia ended up landing on her butt cartoonishly after losing her balance and falling backward. There was a slight fire in her brown eyes when she saw Omar scurry away completely unscathed and totally not regretful about stealing her toy. Nadia stood up and wiped off her frilly dress—her favorite frilly, pale yellow dress that had lace accents at the bottom and a slight sweetheart neckline. A cupcake was what her brother compared it to, but Nadia knew he was just jealous of the fact that he never got special fancy clothes.

Nadia felt her mother put a hand on each of her shoulders and lean down to her level once more in order to whisper something into her ear. Granted, Yasmine had to first find Nadia's ear underneath all that wild and frizzy hair. But when she did, the woman quietly said something about an amazing bedtime story to Nadia when the day would finally conclude. The little girl was buzzing with enthusiasm since she deemed her mother's stories as the best stories ever. They were all very imaginative and incomparable to anything that Nadia had heard her teachers read to her in school.

Later that night, when Nadia was snuggly tucked into her bed, Yasmine entered her daughter's room and quietly shut the door behind her in order to not wake up her son who was sleeping in the same room a few feet away from the door. Nadia carefully sat up in her bed and leaned against the headboard with a cute smile on her youthful face. Yasmine sat down on the edge of Nadia's creaky mattress and caressed her daughter's full cheek with her slim hand. The girl didn't know it yet but she was in for a treat tonight with this particular bedtime story:

The universe was once ruled by eight goddesses, each with their own abilities and opinions about how they wanted to control the celestial bodies in space. And while they were all gorgeous, powerful women, they were also the worst kind of people. Greediness, envy, and obsession plagued the bodies of the goddesses so much so that they didn't treat each other like sisters anymore. They much preferred to call each other enemies due to the many arguments they had endured. The fact of the matter was that none of them were right about how to control space and the things within it. They were all clueless and oblivious. Neither of them really knew about the vastness of space itself and the fact that they couldn't make the dark mass surrender to their control. Every single woman of space kept their possessive ways, except one: Venus.

The second goddess realized that if she and her sisters continued these long quarrels then no one would benefit. In fact, they would end up destroying each other with their own selfishness. Controlling space sounded wonderful even for Venus, but family meant more to her than ruling everything within her reach. And that's when she decided to do the opposite of what her fellow goddesses were doing. While Mars and Saturn were occupied by bickering about the fate of the Milky Way, Venus chose to bring out the positive traits from within herself. No more greediness and jealousy—she went into retrograde once and for all. Venus dared to be different than her sisters and she felt true to herself at the moment. Keeping peace on her mind changed her for the better.