ASHES
Heat licked at Vesperin as she woke up. It was a slow waking as she got her bearings. First, she felt her body’s lack of response. Then?
Then she felt the pain.
Her brain felt like a throbbing, wet mass fit to explode in her skull.
Her mouth stretched in a silent scream as she twisted in the sheets, curling onto her side in a small ball. She wanted it to stop. The pounding in her chest, the breaking of her heart, and the wash of memories, swiftly rushing by behind her closed lids.
It was like trying to hold onto the galaxy itself, for the way the countless memories rushed past.
Flickers of voices, words, the brush of hands… It was all too much.
Vesperin’s hands tangled in her hair, and she pulled, hoping the pain would wake her up from this terrible dream.
Her father was waiting for her. Her mother would be so cross that she had missed dinner. What would it be tonight? Herb stew or her favorite braised lamb with freshly churned butter? She trembled on the bed, pressing her palms to her eyes.
"Wake up, wake up—wake up," she sobbed.
The pain in her head did not relent.
There was someone missing her. Something she was missing. She felt it as surely as she felt the heat lick against her.
What was that burning? Was there a fire? Was it one of her siblings? Had they let the hearth’s fire grow uncontrollable? Oh no.
Vesperin unfurled with a groan, sitting up. As her half-lidded, watery eyes adjusted, she saw things that were hers yet not. Things that belonged yet didn’t.
The walls were not stone. The bed she was on was not low to the floor, with her favorite hide blanket. The blanket was dirty, and the bed was high. Her head pounded as she tried to understand—where was she? How did she get here?
"Mother? Father?" Vesperin called, voice a croak.
She stood slowly, and her toes sank into a rug. She looked down and saw rusted brown stains on it.
A flash of memory.
Vesperin gave a sob. She pressed her hand to the back of her mouth to stifle it. But there was no one here to hear her. She was alone. And?—
"Atlas," Vesperin wailed.
She sank to her knees on the rug, her fingers stretching through the fibers. Old, brown blood flaked off, getting beneath her nails. It was hers. Her blood. She remembered now. So much, too much, more than anyone should ever be able to remember. Lives warred in her mind. One second, she was beneath a willow, then tumbling down through the Stars, through lives, passing by men whom she grew to love, whose Souls called to hers. Now she was here. And she wasRin, yet not. She was Vesperin. Vesperin Vox. She always had been.
The girl called Rin felt distant now, smaller. Her life had been doomed from the start.
Some locked-away part of her trembled, like the floor beneath her knees.
Vesperin’s head hung low, her white hair falling around her shoulders. It shouldn’t be white. The shade was distorted. Tears fell steadily, heavily over her lash line, wetting the rug. A cockroach skittered along the wall, burrowing beneath her dresser. Her eyes traced it. She felt like that bug, trying to hide, to escape—to survive.
Her head hurt so bad. She moaned. Something wet trickled down her face, and she wiped it away with a shaking, trembling hand. When she pulled her fingers away, they were stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood.
Vesperin touched the old, faded bloodstains on her carpet. "I should have died here so long ago." Yet, she’d been saved. Now she knew why. It was as undeniable as the Celestial chasing her. Atlas,her Atlas, had saved her. He had saved her when she could not save herself, repaid her for awakening something in him on the first planet of Stella, in her small village, Luxuria.
In saving a fallen Star, Vesperin had gotten the attention and eternal devotion of a vengeful, protective Celestial.
But where was he now, when she needed him most?
"Atlas?" Vesperin’s voice broke. "Atlas, I need you. Please do not leave me alone." She found her words slipping, her tone turning soft and gentle, a slow rise to the end. Not at all like the clipped, bitter tone she knew she could have when she felt the angriest and most alone. "I need you—please, my Shadow. Do not leave me to face this alone. Do not force me to give up my faith in you now, of all times." Her eyes squeezed shut as she sobbed in the quiet. She was alone. She did not feel him.
Slowly, Vesperin pushed herself to a stand, wobbling from the multiplied pain in her mind, echoes of laughter and groans and cries, amalgamating into one endless screech. It grew to betoo much. Something inside her Soul wavered, then splintered, cracking open.
