EPITHET || [l. loki]

i. Light of a sun

──⇌•♚•⇋──

❝Do you know what an epithet is?❞

THE FIRST THING she ever remembered was the rare scorching light on her home planet. She can't remember the name... but all she remembered was that she was deeply saddened at every similar mention.

There were bursting heat at places where there shouldn't be. It burned her. It scared her. She didn't know where her parents went. She was terrified. She was lost.

Ausra. That was her name. A simple title her parents had graced her with. A name meaning life that her parents had always hoped to accompany her.

But in this moment, she couldn't even recall her own name in the bursts of her fear. There were screams surrounding. She was too big to ignore and too small to understand. She stood there petrified as the shadows of all familiarities ran for their lives. She didn't even think she remembered how to run.

Her legs wouldn't move, her heart failed to beat for her. Trails of crimson guided her way as she stumbled into the dark with her own free will. What directions once seemed just by the doorstep was now foreign. Her arms hurt from squeezing her sides protectively but she couldn't find a way to put them down.

The dark swallowed her small figure as she collapsed within a dimmed tunnel. There was a strange sense of safety within the shadows but at the same time, it was colder than she had ever experienced in her small life.

"Get up," she begged herself. Her palms were ripped with gashes of crimson blood and her knees were scraped and weak. She crawled. Hell, she didn't even know why she was so desperate to get to the other side. It wasn't like there would be safety there. There was never safety anywhere. She had learned it after all these years.

Her shoulders trembled from the shivers of the wind and her eyes bled endlessly. She was like a fawn that had never learned the way of the world, armed with only the buried memory of witnessing death before her eyes.

How could she ever protect herself from this galaxy, let alone world?

There were moments that came to her even when she was a young girl. Moments that she felt more helpless than she will ever be in the future that have carved their way into the deepest depths of her mind. Moments that will linger only to haunt her.

There were the moments she didn't understand a thing about the world, whether to pray like what she saw the others do or to lay in a heap of stinging blood and wait for the arrival of death. She was not even six.

Then he came to her. A glistening figure of light that descended upon a scraggly shadow like her. Her father. The mad titan. The feared conquerer not barely bound by one world. "Was he like her at one point?" she wondered, "No. It couldn't be."

"Do you seek safety?"

"..." she couldn't bring herself to reply.

"Good. Take this." The dagger was heavy in the grip of her small hands. Her eyes were instantly captivated by the emerald jewel gleaming luminously while adorned at the hilt. It hypnotized and drew her, whispering promises of light while she had never felt such chills. It was beautiful in a simple way. The sharp edge terrified her... because it gave her satisfaction.

"What is your name, little one?" he questioned gently though his aura was menacing.

But the girl was already tired from fearing. Get it over with, she told herself, I want to rest. "Ausra," she whispered coarsely, the beautiful dagger slipped from her hands and tumbled to the ground, clattering in a heap against the earth.