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ESTRELLA NARVÁEZ HAD never considered herself the martyr type. She was taught on a lack of discipline by parents who did not want to be tethered to one place or the other.
still, she knew no home other than Punto Alto, the little island where a mountain swallowed half the land.
There, the mountain molded the earth into small mounds, which gave rise to surround Valle Cerrado, the small town-village run by a mayor with a population of a few hundred.
Once, her thirteen-year-old self had sacrificed more than just effort, donning her heart, soul, and being to the village. In return, the mountain filled her with heavy stone, and Estrella learned that not all stars settled amongst the skies.
She was destined to sink through the crevices of Mother Ocean, giving her light to flicker beneath the unknown of Her waters. The mountain's gift was the pledge of Estrella's life in exchange for Punto Alto's.
The Narváez family never wished to settle in an island that swallowed the light, but they had grown afraid of the shore surrounding it.
Or to say, fear had implemented itself within their heads, whispering their daughter's murder into their ears.
Estrella never considered herself much of a martyr, but she supposed that was what she was. Her love for her dying home — despite its want to envelope her in darkness and extinguish her flaming ardor — had inevitably led her to a guillotine with her name written all over it.
Punto Alto killed Estrella Narváez, and Mother Ocean dragged her child into her warm waters, inevitably drowning Estrella before the sky could ever reclaim the star they lost.
It was all because of Her. That false faun that guided Estrella to her destruction, to a secret that should've been swallowed by the island instead of her.
Into the forest, up to the backyard of that house on a hill, the creature's hideous eyes lulled Estrella to that accursed garden.
She had never seen such a hideous place. It cried out for water, the teeth of the soil cracked and dry, shriveling up like food in the sun. Less of a garden and more of a labyrinth, encasing Estrella and slaughtering her soul-ties with Mother Ocean as if it was as easy as snipping string with a pair of scissors.
Devils. Estrella met one young, and it crawled into her mouth with its wicked grin and prickly limbs.
Her devil was not red and it did not have horns carved out of sin and a body coated in blood; It was yellow in color, flushed in the center by a crimson hue. Its shell was hard and pointy, shaped like the very creation Estrella was named after.
That devil slit open her belly and sewed it back together, finding its home within her stomach. It coated her fingers with gold, and blinded her eyes with a citrine glow.
And Estrella became a child of the Earth, relinquishing her love for Mother Ocean that had once so gently caressed her. The Ocean no longer loved Estrella Narváez, but as much as it abhorred her,
She never stopped loving it.
Though her reign was with the stars and the sky, Estrella was bound to the sea and Punto Alto.
Bound to that house on a hill with which she had burned down to the ground, allowing her home to swallow it up instead of her.
Estrella would forever carry her home on her shoulders — those mountains that both saved and condemned her — on her journey to destroying every other form of love that Mother Ocean had kept away from her.
