Stargazer's Shadow

A Sky Uneaten

The fog thickened and stuck to Dahlia's lungs like black mold. She felt the itch in her throat but she held it in to keep running. Where, she didn't know. Her home was lost now. She belonged nowhere. She ran every which way, not really knowing where she was going. All she knew was that she wanted to get as far away from the City of Stairs as she could. This home that once held a special place in her heart brought only shame and grief and remorse. Her childhood, that was once filled with playful memories, so sacred and dear, are now tainted with the bleak blackness from this horrible, horrible day.

At last, her lungs couldn't take it anymore. She collapsed to the dirt-dusted street and coughed a wicked cough. Her lungs wheezed, gasping for air as she tirelessly tried to hack out whatever it was that's inside of her causing all this pain. She's always felt blockage but until now the feeling was unbearable. Her body has betrayed her like she has betrayed her home.

The world is forever doomed because of her.

She was too greedy, too tempted. She was chosen. And now she was nothing.

The look of disappointment on her mother's face was carved into her memory. The sight of her mother was all the more painful to think about. Would she ever see her again? She had to push the thought away. For now, she needed to clean herself up, get on her feet and start running. Run, until there was nowhere left to run.

Until the running brought her here.

Beyond–– more like below–– the City of Stairs was the Chemical Valley. She's heard rumors about this place, and has only seen it from a bird's view. This was where the rebels dwelled. A city of flattened streets and shadows and lost corners and twisted light. Unlike the City of Stairs, where the town built itself one on top of another and each progressing stone step brought you that much closer to the nearest teahouse, Chemical Valley was completely spread out. From above, it looked like a map come to life. She used to stand outside of her balcony watching the city below. She thought it strange then and thought it just as strange now that everything was walking distance, not climbing distance. The space between each place seemed wrong, like a smile with missing teeth.

She dared to walk deeper into the city, deeper into the unknown. Her lungs grew more tense by the second but she held in the urge to release it. Even though she needed to badly. She followed a cobblestoned street straightway, again not knowing exactly where it led to. She passed a tavern with a rickety sign with the words: The Banished Banshee, a worn-out building built from the same stone as the streets. It appeared empty. As a matter of fact, this whole town seemed eerily quiet. A ghost town. Where was everyone? The pizza joint not far from the tavern looked abandoned and so did the coffee shop and the deli. She walked a few more blocks until the buildings faded farther away and the stoned street turned into a dirt road. There was nothing and no one to be seen. She was just about to give up when she heard the echo of a distant scream. The first sign of life since she arrived.

A rotting bridge emerged from the fog. When she got closer she could see it had years worth of graffiti, new overlapping the old. As the fog cleared she noticed people were standing underneath it. Someone had started a fire in a tin garbage can. The closer she got the more she was able to see. Some people were clapping and shouting, while a few others–– she noticed–– were struggling. One man had shoved another and the second had the first in a headlock. The sound of a broken glass and a third man joined the other two, stabbing his makeshift weaponry into the second man's neck, disarming his headlock position and releasing his strangled victim. No one helped the injured man on the ground, but instead pointed and laughed.

Dahlia stayed at a distance and watched the fight unraveling before her. This was the most violence she had seen in a lifetime. It was frightening, but mostly it mesmerized her. This mesmerization will soon devour her, but for now she tucked it in a small pocket in the back of her mind. The shame still had a tight grip on her. The day she broke free from the shackles of her shame would be the day she would learn her true potential. But for now, she hid in the shadows and watched in horror.