Equalla: The Land Where The Elements Rule (On-Hold)

I - The Past I Left Behind

Hey everyone! This is a story I've been working on forever!! I started writing this when I was 12, rewrote it twice and lost it once. 

The good thing is, it was different each time I wrote it and you can say that this story really grew with me.

It's very dear to my heart and I hope you like it.

Happy reading. :D

P.S

I would like to thank dumbledorplz for the amazing cover she made! 

If you want an awesome cover you should totally ask her. :D

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                                               I -  The Past I Left Behind

  I let out a scream and woke up breathing heavily, holding my head in my hands. The dream… it was the same every night ever since she died. My best friend, a mother to me, and the only person I had, left in the world.

   Rose.

   Rose saved me from the hell I used to live in. My mother died giving birth to me and my dad couldn't bear the loss and killed himself. This was one of the stories I was told at the orphanage. Another was that my parents were a bunch of good-for-nothings and that they had left me at Eternal Hope (that was what it was called, and believe me it didn't live up to its name). Anyway I liked the former better; I always believed my parents were wonderful people.

  Eternal Hope believed in making orphans suffer and thought they were making the world a better place by handling us 'creatures' - as they used to call us. We were spanked and beaten up and were forced to live in cell-like rooms that smelt of pee and dust. We slept on the floor with rats nibbling at our toes and spiders crawling all over our bodies. The winters left us half dead, food tasted like mush, and the supposed to be “pudding” tasted like vomit.

  If that wasn’t enough. There were the children..

  The children were horrible! They always made fun of the way I looked, and mostly because they were scared of me.

  Scared of the way I looked. Scared of what happened when anyone was around me.

  I felt scared too sometimes.

  Like the time I had fallen off a tree. I waited for the pain to rush through my body, waited for it burn me with its intensity, to make me wish that I was dead. But it didn't come. I felt a slight breeze under me, enveloping my body as it lifted me softly. It was like I was sitting on a cloud. I was carried like a baby in its mother’s embrace and then gently landed on to the drying grass. When I opened my eyes I found an audience around me looking shocked, and standing still like statues.

   A bold boy who smelled like tissue paper came forward and asked “Howww did you do that?.”

    I didn't know. I don’t know anything.

   I ran away from those scared eyes that screamed ‘freak’ at me. I ran to my refuge, my hell, my cell-like room. I cried for hours but no one came to comfort me. Only hushed voices whispered from the shadows, judging me.

  My appearance was a sin. Unreal and unnatural. My hair, when it was clean, looked a dark musky gray with streaks of pure white. There was a permanent breeze around me that made it always seem like the wind was playing with my hair. There were times when the whispers would lead me to steal coal and rub it into my hair, trying to dye it a darker colour.

  “Disgusting girl! Look at her! Children don’t play with her.”

   The voices in the shadows grew harsher when I did such things.

   My eyes are the colour of the sky on a stormy day. This scared most of the people who tried to challenge me. I once heard the wardens say that I had an air of someone who could punish evil doers.  This was one of the rare times when a spark of hope lit my heart.

   If it weren’t for these features, I would be considered normal. There was nothing else wrong with me. I had a round face with a button nose and full lips. I was tall and had a graceful body. In other words, I was quite beautiful. A beautiful monster.

   People tended to go away from me like I had smallpox or swine flu. I was like an unknown being and the children there stayed away from things that were out of the ordinary. It wasn’t strange that I was never even considered for adoption.

   But finally the day came. The day I could get away from all this hate. Relief and happiness filled me when our warder- Ms. Poker Face, as I liked to call her- told me I had to leave the orphanage and look forward to life outside its walls. Kids here, when they reached sixteen, were thrown out of Eternal Hope and released into the wild.

   So when I was leaving, I packed the few items I had left with me, like my necklace, which was the only thing that had remained with me since my birth. Somehow no one was able to take it from me; bad things happened to them if they did. Like the time a bully tried to take it but suddenly there was strong wind and she fell away from me, banging her head against a wall. I got into a lot of trouble for that because the wardens thought I pushed her. But since then, none of the kids tried to take it from me. I packed the few clothes that I had, and left the dreadful gates of Eternal Hope without looking back.

    At first the outside world seemed like heaven to me. A sense of freedom warmed my heart. I looked at the shops and buildings until they started to thin away. I had left the city, and kept walking. Some unknown force pulled me towards it. I dragged my feet forward, hurting them as I stepped on sharp, jutting stones. Darkness started to embrace the sky and the moon came out of hiding. Then, when it started to snow and I had no place to go, well, it didn’t seem so good. I didn’t know what I was looking for and I walked for what seemed like hours when finally, I fainted.

     I woke up to find myself in a room filled with all types of roses and other wild flowers. The sight and smell were overwhelming, intoxicating. I was in a small room with a high ceiling and stone walls. The bed was low and on its side was a small desk which held a round basin filled with water, with a snow white towel next to it. There was also a vase filled with flowers. The walls were stylishly covered with oil paintings. I got off the bed and found myself dressed in sleeping robes. I looked around the room once more and found my pitiful things lying on a chair in the corner. There was also a shelf of books near it. I quickly went and changed into my clothes and then went and looked out of the window.

     The scene outside made me catch my breath. There were hills and trees and flowers and all the wonderful things that nature could provide. I could see the rising sun over the hills and a little brook trickling nearby. It was beautiful, and it took me a moment to remember to breathe. The wind rushed through the window making me feel light headed. Now this felt like heaven. I felt like soaring to the skies and dancing and playing with the wind. For once in my dreadful life I felt happy. I snapped out of my mood when I heard footsteps coming up, accompanied by the sweet smell of wild roses.. I let out a sigh and turned around towards the door to wait for the unknown.

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