The Fall Of Edith

Chapter 2, seven years earlier

You have now met our main character, Edith. In order to understand more of her and her story, we will have to go deeper down the path. Careful! There might be thorns hidden beneath the bushes lining our way. Come on now, follow me, I will lead you.

We arrive in the past, seven years earlier, in a small city called Coventry in the United Kingdom. We stand in front of a big restaurant, decorated with paper lanterns and fairy lights on the outside. Walking through the door, we can see that it's filled to the rim with High school graduates. There's a bar on the right side, bartenders rushing in and out from the kitchen behind the counter, serving mostly parents, but also some students and their siblings and friends. There are only few regular visitors, looking slightly out of place. Music is blasting from loudspeakers and there are graduates in ill fitted suits and daring dresses milling around. There is one red haired tall boy almost walking into us, but thankfully he swerves to the left and strides away. Most of the guests inside the restaurant are sitting mixed together in groups of various sizes, beer bottles and salted peanuts in their hands, trying to have conversations over the booming music. We walk across the room and emerge on the other side through gigantic sliding glass doors onto the patio. This is where we see young Edith. Did you recognize her? She has her eyes rimmed with black kohl. Lip glossed lips and golden hoop earrings. Lopsided grin. She's wearing a sleeveless blue dress, decorated with tiny butterflies, and her blond hair is floating all around her. Even though she's seven years younger, she doesn't look like it. Or maybe it's the sadness. There's a sadness in her eyes that we haven't seen there before. I will leave you to watch the scene.

Moe raises his arm and waves at me from the other side of the patio. He's standing next to Bethany and someone I only barely recognize from school. I'm watching them from across the patio and smiling, I wave back at them. We're all still friendly with each other, but our group has gotten some obvious cracks over the past few months. Bethany and Moe are having some type of on and off affair, which makes it very hard to hang out with them together. Either they're licking each other's faces off or arguing about one inane thing after the other, depending on the current status of their relationship.

"Yo, E. was good to see you at the party yesterday" It's Chris Gander and his older brother, approaching me. I fist bump both of them and grin. "yea, never thought I'd make it out alive". Yesterday was the pre-graduation party and I went with a couple of guys to the local pub, partying and drinking till long after last call. I don't really hang out with Chris and his crew anywhere other than in school, but they always invite me to their parties. Moe was there too and we toasted our new lives after graduation, he told me Bethany already got accepted into her medical university and she's studying like crazy. When I asked him if they are together again he just shrugged and said "let's think about happier things tonight".

Me and Bethany used to be closer, but she was never someone I felt like I could wear my own skin with, always scared she would judge me. I remember only a few months ago we went to a concert together, Imagine Dragons. When they played Demons, I stood in the audience, my heart breaking in front of me, sobbing as quietly as I could. I don't know if she saw, but she never mentioned it.

That was the last time we hung out together. Since then she has been fading out of my life and into Moe's again. I cannot lie, I hate her for it.

But now it's all over anyways, chances are we will never see each other again after this graduation party. It's all coming to an end. I stand in the doorway between the restaurant and the terrace. It's almost dark now and it's visible that the people around me are slowly getting tipsy from the alcohol. I stare off into the distance, watching the tops of the trees surrounding the area. There's a black bird screeching, flying off into the night sky. My body disintegrates and I'm only left with my mind. With a scream of freedom I spread my wings and ascend into the air. The cold wind of the night is propelling me through the darkness, with a flap of my wings the ground is trembling. Another flap and the trees explode, sending shrapnel soaring through the sky.