Total Eclipse

Chapter 14

She didn't know where she was. And she doesn't know how she got there.

Thoughts ran through her mind, but it was like looking through a stained glass window. Foggy and beautiful and unclear yet promising.

She felt empty.

Not mad.

Not sad.

Not even happy, if she remembered what that feels like.

She felt nothing, which was more than she felt the past two decades.

She blinked and felt her eyes sting with the acid rain that fell down her face.

Amity could not remember the last time she had cried like this.

The stinging water in her eyes was as clear as crystal. Not even a flake of gold was to be found, so she let them stream. Her head fell as quickly as the tears did, this unknown feeling washing over her like an unstoppable tide.

But it was unlike Amity to forget things, and somewhere deep in her heart, she still knew that the tides were controlled by the moon.

She could hear Luz's soft voice, and somewhere in her muddled mind, she found some sort of response.

Amity's usually sharp voice broke, small and fragile, like that of a fairy with cracked wings, unable to fly.

She silently prayed for whatever being was up there to promise that the sun wouldn't set on her, on them.

Luz had a heart of gold. And Amity's was encased in it. They weren't the same.

Something in her gut had always wanted Luz to be the one. Kissing other girls and when she opened her eyes for a moment, brown ones were staring back at her. She wished she could turn the memories off. It was pathetic, being hung up on one girl you couldn't have then, and still can't have now. Every time she thought they were gone, she just saw Luz. She had a damaged compass and Luz was stuck as north.

And now she was lost, and no one cared to help her. Everyone adores the moon when it's full, but no one cares to do the same when it dwindles to a crescent.

At least, that was until Luz came back.

Everything she had wanted was there for her, and yet, when she had it, she wanted nothing but to be rid of it.

But it didn't matter. She kept being shaken awake, the colors around her shifting, purples and teals, greens and golds, the one constant being the soft and calming brown she found in Luz's eyes.

Then she opened her eyes, an unexpected smile upon wiping away a crystal clear tear.

She found Luz, and everything that happened flooded back to her.

She was in a state of shock, as her mind had been poked and prodded by the one person she couldn't let see. She had to prove she was okay without her, no—better—without her and that she had only grown.

But they both knew this wasn't true.

But she didn't have time to unpack all that, not near Luz, especially. So, instead she focused on the perfect reflection of herself in her tears, her image not distorted but painfully true. In these tears, she wasn't the golden goddess that she found in the glimmering, Mercury-like substance. Her tears would kill you, it felt like, but they made you die a beautiful death, a promise time can cruelly take away from you.

Amity had always wanted to die pretty. Die in a way that she'd be a muse long after her time, a goddess who lived past death through the lense of song, legend, and art.