Round1✔ - Ambassadors' Pick
Round2✔
Longlist✔
Shortlist✔
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Genre: fantasy, romance, and a teeny tiny bit of action.
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Of a Moon, majestic silver and soothing blue, that hung in the sky, breathing life into barrenness and lifting...
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Synopsis:
The moon. The moon. The moon.
So bright.
Rays bathing the earth beneath, illuminating paths, and breathing life into barren lands.
However, what about the dark side of the moon?
Spending a thousand years stuck in an abyss of nothing but emptiness, loneliness, and darkness is the only life Adaliah has ever known...until she grants someone the gift of life and he grants her the gift of love in return.
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ONC Shortlister(✓) / Won The 2023 NanoWatt Awards in the category Novellas / August 1st, 23: Featured on @StoriesUndiscovered - Tales of Adventure / September 1st, 23: 1st place in the Vampire/werewolf category in the Lavender Awards hosted by @grandeur_cat with the highest score: 95.5% / September 11, 23: - 3rd place winner in the fantasy category in The Book Awards hosted by AlexandraLing2000 - Featured on @adultfiction - On Stranger Tides / September 13, 23: featured on @SpeculativeFiction - Fantasy (mature reads) / September 15, 23: featured on @Fantasy - Romantasy / September 23: featured on @HighFantasy - fair Verona (romance)
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Chapter One: Gift Of Life
A tear.
It welled up, slowly, carefully, involuntarily.
It sparkled, rippled, and burned in its descent. It slid down tauntingly until it reached her chin before, just as the human had done, fell, fell, fell.
Then, with a blink of her eyes, it stopped.
The red moon spilled across the vast lands beneath, and the tear flickered as it remained frozen in the air while Adaliah stared at it. Unfathomable emotions raged behind her dead eyes.
Dead.
The human was dead.
She'd jumped after him without a second thought, her body propelled into motion by unfamiliar feelings.
It was a strange day, that day. For instance, it marked Adaliah's first venture outside her castle in a long, long time. Yet, on this visit to the realm of mortals, she found herself attempting to save someone who was already dead.
The human had died long before she'd even caught him.
The wind had fiercely lashed against her chilled skin as she raced against time to reach his lifeless form. Finally reaching him, her arms had encircled his body, and together they hovered in midair, her gaze roaming his face.
It was a mess.
Bruises, wounds, swelling. He was drenched in blood, and his fresh injuries kept oozing sticky red. A heavy, crushing feeling pressed at her chest as her feet finally settled on the ground beneath.
Placing him down gently, she looked at his sprawled, broken limbs.
Pathetic.
Humans were pathetic, pitiful, ephemeral. Such evanescent lives they lead.
Yet, that treacherous tear had slipped out for a mere human.
The droplet caught the light of the moon that seemed to weep blood for the lost soul of this mortal shell. The night was dark. Vermillion rays of a bleak sphere stretched out across vast skies, terrorizing life out of its twinkling stars.
Adaliah's gaze moved from the tear that hovered over her palm and settled on the large gash across the human's chest. She kneeled next to him, fingers trailing the cuts on his head before skimming over his torso. His body had most definitely slammed hard against the protruding edges on his way down.
"It must have hurt a lot."
Her murmur was carried by the gentle whoosh of the breeze as one of her nails elongated before slicing her palm. Then, her hand slipped through the wound and deep inside his ribcage. Unsure fingers wrapped around his still heart and squeezed hard.
Nothing.
She squeezed, squeezed, squeezed...
Heaving a sigh, Adaliah retrieved her arm then pushed herself upright, tossed her hair back, and glanced at her hand – scarlet smears all over her pale skin. Her tongue wrapped around her ring finger and she licked it clean.
Another tear slipped out.
Numerous questions flooded her mind – did he have a family? A lover? Will he miss them in his death as much as they'd miss him now that he's dead? – before she quashed them as quickly as they had arisen.
"What a tragic death you had, you silly human."
Her knees bent slightly, preparing for the big jump that followed.
Strands, blacker than the deepest of nights, swayed in rhythm with the wind as she retreated to her castle – a fortress of loneliness, isolation, and darkness, nestled within the folds of another dimension in the dark side of the moon.
The second droplet dug a hole in her heart with the weight of loss chained to her soul. She'd waited for thousands of years for love, envying her sister for a long time before deciding to come down to earth as well.
Yet, on her first visit, all she found was death.
Perhaps, Adaliah was condemned to a life full of nothing but death, tenebrosity, and seclusion.
She was, after all, the forgotten, abandoned, and shunned princess of the moon.
"I have waited a thousand years to find love, what's one more day?" She shrugged in a poor attempt at self-consolation. Pathetic, she gritted her teeth and wiped away the damn tear stuck to her cheek, forgetting about the one she left hanging atop the body of the dead human.
The tear continued its descent after Adaliah reached her castle, and slipped through the wide gap in his chest until it tickled his silent heart.
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MEANING OF THE NAMES USED:
Adaliah is a girl's name of Biblical origin meaning "one that draws water, poverty, cloud, death."
