Splintered Souls

✎ | The Grace of Fire

In the dead of night, a woman - whose name bore importance no longer, passed through the vacant streets. The cheerful, bright flashes amid the night sky stood in direct contrast to her mood, for she was tearful and broken: self-diagnosed with a bleeding heart. 

For the umpteenth time that night alone, another firework exploded into a swirl of dazzling gold with a whiff of purple. The brief light momentarily illuminated the mascara-touched trails below her puffy eyes. 

Only mere moments prior, at the dawn of the new year - when the transient moonlight caressed her skin, the young woman believed so vehemently that her life had been sorted out. Only for an altercation to sour her mood, maim the love she shared with her loved ones, and ruin all hope to attain the future she dreamt of for so long. 

But now, all was done for. 

This modern life was no longer worth living, but she knew that was only a temporary feeling; that there would be better times someday again. And until then, she would hold out, endure the scars of time, as long as necessary.

Strolling toward the central park, the young adult came to an abrupt halt before the large wishing fountain. She sat down on the ridge, her fingers coiling around the stone slab. Her eyes investigated the Greek marble statues dotted around the place. She had always found it an odd pick of design but never paid it much mind.

The woman ducked her head, hovering over the water's surface, "Oh, Emanuel," mumbled she tearfully, planting an open hand over her beating, bruised heart. "I am so sorry. I've messed up," she continued before pausing, undoing the half-heart pendant from her neck; she extended her arm over the water, "We were meant to break."

With that remark, she dropped the silver pendant.

A tear followed shortly thereafter.

The pendant touched the water as a barrage of fireworks exploded in the midnight sky. 

The woman closed her eyes. Unknowingly, those that belonged to the statues lit up in an azure blue - their gazes meeting at the iridescent orb's core atop the fountain.

A blinding light flashed across the sky; the woman opened her eyes - squinting in disbelief. 

Darkness soon returned, and all appeared normal until the woman glanced at the fountain. The water had parted, revealing a starry sky as far as the eye could see within the confines of the stonework.

Almost impulsively, she hesitantly reached for whatever lay beyond - immediately being met by a rush of cold air and the emergence of a sudden calling, "Enter the Great Void; leave behind thine world of insignificance, and thou shalt be basked in glory, wealth, fame and love."

Without a second thought, she crawled onto the fountain and cautiously stuck her leg down the hole. The parting water did not seem to reach her skin, nor did it reach into the heavenly skies below. 

That was it.

She needed not to mull it over any longer - she let her flesh be consumed by the otherworldly false skies as her vision faded to black whilst her body trembled in anxious excitement.

| ≈ |

There she laid - a woman had become a girl once more. 

With a sharp intake of oxygen, her body quivered momentarily, then jolted right up. Her hair had transformed: the stray blonde locks she had despised were no longer. In their stead, there were waist-length black tendrils that defied the very light.