N I G H T S C A R S

a v a

Ava was raised a shark.

Her parents were both cruel corporate lawyers, clever, cunning, pristine, cold. She was raised in their palace by a woman other than her mother, a nanny. Her parents were never around, always off on business trips.

Or maybe, as Ava had often pondered as a child, she was a disappointment to them and they despised her so they avoided her as much as they could. Later in her teen years, Ava shook this off as a silly childhood theory. Or at least she pretended she had.

Ava was, of course, her parents daughter. No matter how much they were gone, they made her exactly like them. From way she looked to the way she talked, moved, thought, and breathed.

Success was hereditary, her father always said.With her agile, elegant, bird-like features, jet black glossy locks, and electrifying blue eyes, she could devour a soul with a single look.

She was always the mystery girl. The one who emanated cold and naturally scared off children. The one who was dragged to parties by the outgoing Elle. The one who sat uncomfortably with Elle's friends who were all terrified of her.

Ava was the responsible one, the observant one, the one who though before she acted. Ava was one who learned how to put on a smile and twist her words carefully. She knew how to carve a knife into someone's skin without so much as twitching a muscle, all with her words.

Ava kept Elle grounded from being too much of her wildcard self. She was quiet, and what her best friend referred to as "the mom friend." She wasn't impetuous, unlike her redheaded counter part. She was clever, logical. She was a thinker. A purebred shark.

Strange that she became a dragon instead.

Ψ

Ava never told anyone, not even Elle, that ever since she was Scarred, she dreamt about it every night.

It has been strange. At first she thought that the bear trap set in the woods was the most painful thing she had ever felt. Then she felt the Scars.

Ava remembered hearing the monster in the forest, neither of the two girls knowing what it was at first, chasing them through the woods. Ava knew it could easily catch them. It was a cat, playing with its prey. Having fun. Enjoying a torturous game of tag and hide n' seek. It was almost like she could read the creature's mind. She could feel its emotions, almost as her own, that night.

Ava wanted Elle to live. She screamed for Elle to run and never look back. To get help as quick as she could.

Elle was a fast runner, she was strong, and as much as she didn't act like it-Elle was smart. She could make it.

Ava never told Elle about the whispers either. She could hear them along with the rumbling of the creature's throat as it had crept closer in the blackness.

Her blood and sweat and tears mixed with the rain pouring from the sky, the sound of thunder becoming the pounding of her heart. The two rhythms felt nearly identical and they became indistinguishable. The thunder was constant and repeated and ethereal.

When she heard the whispers, somehow she knew what they were. They were the centuries passed on, legacies. Legends.

Then she heard Elle's shot fire. Saw it going perfectly through Night's heart.

Elle was a perfect shot. Even before she got her dead father's old pistol, when she had to sneak them from her stepdad's gun rack, she'd always been a perfect shot. She never missed. Backwards, forwards, blindfolded. Elle said it was genetic.

But a dead on shot couldn't fix the fact that it was too late. She felt the claws pierce her heart, shredding through flesh and bone.

She'd always thought about dying, but she never expected it to be like this. She felt peaceful, although her death was anything but.

For Ava, there had been nothing but black. Dead silence. Somehow she knew she was dead, but wouldn't be for long. She stayed like that for a while, existing as nothing. she remembered the thought crossing her mind and thinking that if that was death, she wanted life back. No matter how torturous it was. She'd rather have pain than nothing at all. Just darkness and silence for an eternity.

Then Ava heard it, only a whisper at first. Then it got louder. it became a scream. A hysterical, horrified, pained scream, filled with enough agony to shatter a soul.

Then Ava woke up.

Ψ

When Ava found out what she was, she wanted death back.

She walked by day and by night she was either chained up in the basement of Elle's stepdad's lake house or roaming the town savagely, giving even further incentive for the decades old supernatural rumors to spread about Evermoor, while Elle hunted her down.

Elle, always the dolphin, social and much smarter than most people would think, while Ava was the shark, taught her about the legends. She'd dedicated her life to helping save Ava's.

Ava couldn't kill herself. That would just set the dragon free, with no human form, meaning it would be dragon both night and day. Forever. She couldn't get rid of the curse either without passing it on to another, and she wouldn't give that burden to someone else.

A burden she wanted to burn, and was willing to burn herself within the process.

Every single night.

Ava wondered if anyone knew what that was like.

It was agony.