𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬 - 𝙟. 𝙝𝙖𝙡𝙚

𝘵𝘸𝘰: 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨

[ act one, chapter two: coping ]

⏳⭐️🪐

   IT WAS one of those nights again. One of the nights where every emotion she couldn't feel during the day hit her all at once. While she pleaded to every God and wished upon every star while the sun was out; when the sky darkened was when it seemed that the Gods finally listened to her.

Athena woke with a start, gasping for breath. It was then that she felt everything. The panic, the fear, the despair, she felt all of it.

"No, please...please." She cried out.

Her hands gripped the bed sheets tightly, mimicking the way her heart squeezed in on itself. The panic that she felt was overwhelming. Sweat lined her forehead like it was a hot summer day, her heart beat ferociously in her chest. Athena could hear her dad's voice in her head, telling her to just take deep calming breaths.

She sat up in her bed and put a hand to her heart, hoping that somehow by putting pressure on her chest that it would stop the pounding that resonated deep within her soul. Athena breathed in through her nose and held it for as long as she could before letting it out shakily. She continued this until her pulse didn't threaten to rip through her skin.

When she was calm enough, she took in her surroundings. Her walls...painted a deep purple color and the posters and paintings plastered onto them. A desk to her right, sitting underneath a window that was always open, so when nights like this would come she could sit out on her roof and look at the stars. A small beanbag chair to her left, placed next to her closet doors. She would sometimes sit there and draw the constellations that were painted in white on her black ceiling.

"So they can stand out" Her little sister said to her when they teamed up to paint it.

Lastly, she acknowledged the bed that she was sitting on. The place where her body would lay as her nightmares took over the sweetest of dreams. Where she would wake up every night in a cold sweat. Athena loathed her bed. She could be dreaming about the most amazing things, like sitting in a meadow with her mother on one of her lucid days. But then she would wake up and it was all fake. She would cry and cry, wishing that it was real.

Athena realized then that that would be her now, she would have her lucid days and the days where she couldn't remember how to take a shower. She would be just like her mother.

It was weird, because she spent her entire life looking up to her mom, wanting to be just like her when she grew up. And now she is grown up, and her mother is dead. Killed by the same thing that she has. It turned out that it was the one time where a wish of hers came true. She ended up just like her mom, destined to have the same illness that she had. Fated to die in six months time.

She lifted herself off of her bed and moved towards the window, looking out into the night sky. It was cold, but not as cold as it would be during the winter. Athena pulled a blanket off of her bed and climbed out her window. She sat down on the roof, smiling at how the sky had a tint of purple, her favorite color.