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^^^How I imagine Nova to look
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Masks, as white as snow, stained with blood. Coughs echo through my brain. The two most vivid memories from when I was an infant. I have no idea who my parents are, or presumably were. Over seven hundred years ago, a mutant of COVID-19 wiped out almost all the planet. Only a few thousand survived, leaving them to fight for survival. After a couple of hundred years, civilisation started up again. In fact, the population rose so much that the law is that you can only have one child. But that's soon going to change. With disease lurking in every corner, spreading rapidly, people are dying from sickness every day. My name is Nova, and this is my story.
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Rain trickles down the side of my window. I press my nose up to it and watch as it races the other raindrop. "No, Nova!" my Mother, Andromeda, shouts, "You know you're not meant to leave the curtains open past seven, sweetie," she adds in a hushed whisper, shutting the curtain on the world around me.
"Now, I've got work to do, honey, 'kay?" she presses a kiss onto my cheek and I giggle. "There's mac and cheese heated up. Remember, Ayla's going to be putting you to bed at eight-thirty, okay?" Seven years old I pout. My Motherly figure smiles and sashays out of the room.
She has rich milk chocolate skin and frizzy hair. She always dresses in a cloak of blue, her favourite colour, which matches her peculiar eyes, a bright blue as the sky once was. Andromeda Cassidy is the mother I never had. She found me on the streets when I was three years old and took me in. All that was in my possessions was a single book, The Book of Stars, by Arden Morshower, my favourite author. No one knows how I survived that long on my own.
The book had been signed by Arden Morshower himself. Obviously, my parents had been big fans. The name Nova had been circled in blue ink on Page 119. That is how I came to be Nova.
When I think of the memories that plagued my thoughts those eleven years ago, puddles of blood flicker between my eyes. Blood-curdling screams haunt my nightmares.
Since I was a little girl I've fantasised about history - giant castles, princesses and daring knights. Emperors and Rulers and Pharaohs. Our house is far from a castle. It is instead Apartment 59362, a little set of rooms of many on the fifty-sixth floor of a scraper in the midst of the City. I will describe my room for you.
