Tale of Our Love // Pucca (EXTENDED)

Chapter 1

June 17, 1942

Teansi was very young when it happened. That was probably the reason why her little mind couldn't comprehend what was happening in front of her. She understood that the people around her were torn with grief, that their hearts were mourning and grieving. What she couldn't understand was why they were grieving. The place she knew as her home suddenly seemed so gloomy. Every single cloud, which were once shaded in a thick layer of white, were suddenly blurred with black and gray. It was almost as if the entire world lost it's color. That was how utterly tragic the situation was.

She didn't quite understand why there was a huge white container in front of her, with a painting of her best friend standing on top of it. She didn't even know if she could call that a container. It was too big to be called one, so big that it may fit an entire body inside. Everyone around her was sobbing hysterically, holding a bundle of ivory roses in their hands. When she thought about why they were crying, not a single idea came to her mind. In fact, she didn't even know what this event was in the first place.

Teansi approached one of the older goddesses who treated her as if she was her little sister. Taiyang, the goddess of the sun. It was not like her to look as blue as she did at the moment. Droplets of tears were leaking from her eyes, and pitiable whimpers were parting from her lips. But Teansi didn't know why she was hurting so much, and the same went for everyone else. Why was everyone heartbroken? When did the times when they were all happy fade away? Young and naïve as she was, Teansi believed that this grief would last for only a day. The next day, the sun would be shining again.

"Taiyang, what happened?" Teansi asked her innocently, not having a single clue as to why the goddess of the sun was mourning so much.

"Kafelam," Taiyang whimpered. "She's dead."

"Dead?"

Teansi didn't even have an idea what the word 'dead' meant. This was the first time she ever heard such a word in her very few years of existence. Taiyang's eyes were looking straight at the goddess of weather, widening as though she just said something that she wasn't supposed to, not that the weather goddess knew that in any way.

"She's gone," Taiyang corrected herself, wiping her tears as much as she could, yet new ones were born.

"When will she come back?"

"...I don't know."

Of course Teansi was going to interpret that in her own way, like almost all children do. She didn't think that Kafelam would never make her return. She believed that she was just taking a vacation, and that she would come back eventually, greeting them with a smile like she usually would. She would probably return with a gift for each one of them, a souvenir that they could treasure.

Teansi and Kafelam were the closest of friends. They stuck to each other as though they were super glue, as though they were two peas inside a pod that was never going to open up. They were from petals of the same flower. All she remembered was Kafelam telling her that she had to go to the human world for a while, that she needed to stop a war that was happening between the humans. Teansi couldn't understand what in the world she meant. What was a war? Was it a goodie, that she could swallow up?

"I can't believe this!" Hiobul, the god of fire, exclaimed. "How stupid can you be, to think that you can stop this war that was caused by the devil himself?!"

"Please don't say that about Kafelam," Mishul, the goddess of water, sighed. "She just wanted to stop this war. This is the second time the entire world went to chaos, and it's taking place in the same century. And it was caused by the same devil."

"How tragic," Tsulidal, the god of the moon, frowned. "Demons truly are terrible creatures."

What was a devil? What were demons? Teansi's adolescent mind couldn't comprehend what was happening in front of her. But if her superiors thought that all demons were 'terrible creatures', then they must be 'terrible creatures', indeed.