○ ○ ○
I. YOU WILL BURN
THE SMALL TOWN OF LUNA HOMINEM was home to a miscellany of mortal―and immortal―beings. Humans who died, those who didn't. Humans that are strong, those that are weak like a dewy day sun. Mortals that killed, immortals that saved, vice versa. Immortal warriors, human wars.
In the grander scheme of things―both mortals and killers, deceased and immortals―the town was split into 2 parts. Not Northside-Southside or Eastside-Westside, no.
The city consisted of the Sacred and the Cursed.
Our story, this backwards tale, is focused mainly on the (not-so) beloved latter section. The Cursed. The ones with malevolent deaths flowing through their veins like blood, hot as the sun. Cursed were the criminals of the city, the doomed, the poor, the dead. A few immortals made it to this side by a course only packed with misfortune. Only a few, though, since with a lifetime and a half to live, it wouldn't be very lively being poor, a criminal, doomed.
All the others lived in the Sacred faction.
The Sacred half was across an unstable bridge over a lake and behind a field of poppies. This half was beautiful, swathed from head to toe in wealth, success, honour, and life everlasting. The streets were clean, the smiles were (definitely not) real, the kids were bright, parents were powerful. The ones with ichor streaming out of their eyes as they cry after the party. The Sacred had it dripping through their skin and backwards to the heart.
A Sacred could fall from a line of wrongly executed witches and still end out on top, whilst a Cursed could be a direct relative to French royalty and end up splattered on a sidewalk after falling out of their open window. What would you call that? Unpleasant, unfair, unkind? Unnecessary, uncivil?
No. Both sides called it 'even', called it 'life goes on', called it 'whatever, man'. A scarce few wished someone actually cared, but of course to no avail. Luna Hominem was this, just as it should be: unpleasant, unfair, unkind, uncivil, unnecessarily wicked. Everyone knew that when they walked in, checked into Motel Venus by the entry highway. Everyone could read the dead-silent signs and hear the blood splattering behind the trees.
Well, everyone but the Pryors.
They were new and hadn't been there before. No bloodline to put them in place, no ichor or malevolence, no splattered ancestors or immortal parents. So, they could choose to either be Sacred or Cursed, to be rich or to be doomed. An easy choice, sure. Except these idiotic three were unaware of the division: Sacred wasn't, well, sacred; Cursed was simply the poorer side.
So, they moved into the apartment next to the Decameros instead of the Colonial next to the Greehns in Sacred. A particularly special apartment. An apartment with a curse balancing not-yet-eighteen girls, flames with entrancing voices, and burning to death. And since the Pryor parents weren't good at studying their new moving locations, their daughter - Clementine - was of this not-yet-eighteen requirement. Consequently, she would most likely die in the same way previous female teen inhabitants had.
And the eyes, oh the eyes. Whenever someone would murmur or whisper or call out their sympathies or amused comments or just dish out pitying looks, their eyes screamed the same sentence, the same three words: "You will burn!"
She didn't doubt it.
Clementine, unlike her parents, had simply Googled her new town a week prior, searched her new house on the Maps application on her phone. "BELOVED TEEN BURNS TO DEATH IN HER APARTMENT, YET NOT A TRACE OF SMOKE OR DISTRESS FOUND!!"
She will burn.
"But not today," she would reply silently to their eyes. Sure, she knew one day she either wouldn't live to see those eyes, or it would fall through before the sun melts into the forest. Clementine was not surprised at her luck. It was because she had none.
○ ○ ○
A U T H O R ' S N O T E:
this. this took me forever to dish out and I'm very proud of it. it's like 10,000% different from my first drafts and renditions, but it's g o o d (to me). in case you were wondering, 'luna hominem' means 'the moon man' in Latin. stay tuned! *wink*
Thursday 6 June 2019
( 7:38 PM )
659 words, not including A/N.
