[Wattpad Featured Story: Fantasy Hidden Gems] When we were children they whispered about beasts that hid amongst the shifting dunes, dark things with sharp teeth and loud howls and an insatiable thirst. Animals that gutted their prey and left intestines rotting in the sun and bones sprawled out across dried riverbeds. We listened with rapt attention and shivered despite the searing desert heat. But I'm not a child anymore, and I know better. The sand-dusted coyotes, the sleepy vipers-they're just animals, dumb and slow. I've met the real beast of the dunes, and he's nothing like they say. He wears the skin of a man, and the silks of a noble, and spins lies with a silver tongue sharp enough to make the earth bleed... And he holds my life in his blood-stained hands.

* * * Maya Smith is a girl living in a sea of trouble. She feels like there's nothing for her in this life, no way that she'll ever become normal again. Conrad Wilkins is a boy who's been bred from darkness and misfortune. He sees himself as one who isn't worthy of love; someone who women would always run away from. Together, they make a pair destined on not looks, but circumstantial similarities. And together, they will overcome the plague of flicker pain - the pain ready to knock you back into the world of indecisiveness and fear as soon as you learn to smile... [short chapters]

He speaks as if he knows everything, he trips over his own tongue like the intelligent person he is. The lingering taste of vodka and whiskey taint his sinful chapped lips. When he walks he stumbles, he smells like nicotine and he's cold. Ice resides in his veins and heart but not even the hell like flames of hatred and anger burning within his mind can freeze over. She's sweet like honeysuckle. She's warm and physically beautiful with her long brown hair and different colored gaze. When she smiles, the entire world stops to look and stare at her. Yet underlying her forced smile and physical perfection, dwells the monster that is her mental illness that she cannot control. Being beautiful doesn't hide it either, only mass doses of prescription pills do. In which an 18-year-old who believes he hasn't much to live for leaves his small sleepy town in hopes of finding his mother who abandoned him years ago. All the while a 17-year-old girl with severe Manic Depression tags along in hopes of being distracted from her illness and to also find peace of mind and happiness elsewhere. ** Inspired by music, specifically The 1975, Lana Del Rey, and others. ** Rough draft in desperate need of editing, plot holes, grammatical issues, etc. * not cliche but cliche it has it moments, but also so many plot twists so idk yeah. Mature Content. Read at your own will. Copyrighted ©