Her mother always whispered of a world much like her own, gently whispered tales of people just like her on an impossible green planet lulled her to sleep as a child, and on this curious planet was an unspoken sort of magic that couldn't be describe...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
____________________
AMBER EYES OPENED up to an endless sea of stars, millions of small lights twinkled and gleamed in a luminescent beauty that seemed almost too mystical to be real. They reminded her of the small fae who came out during the night and frolicked in vast dunes, hundreds of small fairies with glittering wings who danced in the pale sands and burrowed deep into the mutely colored dunes once the suns came out. Except these fairies were motionless and whispered a surreal beauty too far to reach, silent but almost enchanting against the dark vastness of the night sky. She'd seen stars before, but nothing quite as surreal.
Aloe couldn't tear her eyes away from such beauty, and it felt like eons had passed before her mind cleared and her clouded senses took in the quiet terrain around her. She lay on her back, her body stiff but able to feel the unfamiliar land against her fingers. The moist soil beneath her cooled her senses, and the smell of fresh grass cleared her foggy mind. But the way the crisp air seemed to almost burn her lungs and the grass seemed almost itchy against her soft skin felt foreign to her.
She'd known greenery from the small amount the palace had, but nothing quite as strange as this.
It wasn't until she gazed up at the single biggest and brightest moon of her life that her thrumming heart stilled, and with wide eyes, she found herself unable to tear her gaze away from the single moon which cast a soft luminescent glow against the darkness around her—in a way she'd never seen before. She slowly pulled herself up into a sitting position, unable to look away from the beauty that seemed to almost lull her in like an enchantress.
'There's a place far beyond our own and it has one moon bright enough to light up the night sky.' A familiar sentence whispered its way into her thoughts, like a distant memory that gently nudged at her foggy mind.
A single tear slipped down her cheek as the memories spilled in like an unwelcome flood, unforgiving and relentless as the warmth of her tears brought back the horrors she'd momentarily forgotten, and her vision blurred into a mess of dark colors.
Dark ash fell from the heavens like gentle snow amongst the motionless sea of bodies, the stench of burning flesh burned her lungs as she screamed and the helpless cries of her people rang clear in her mind. The sight of broken marble structures and shattered memories painted like the aftermath of war, a red glow blanketed heavily amidst the horrific scenery as the suns set peacefully below the never-ending dunes of sand and the echoes of horror filling the heavy air like a relentless sea. Everything happened so fast yet the horrors had been etched deeply into her mind, like a searing brand pressed harshly into her memories and never to disappear.
They'd been invaded, and her mother and her people were dead.
A broken sob fell past her lips before she could control it and her body trembled as she stared up at the night sky, an unfamiliar sense of anxiety weighing heavy in the pit of her stomach.
