Asteria Winston-Lightwood -- District One

And as the wind whispers of spring
Her lips reply goodnight, once more
The faeries settle gently on her eyelids
And she sleeps into oblivion, like before

“ w h e n t h e f i r s t b a b y l a u g h e d f o r t h e f i r s t t i m e ”

t h e l a u g h b r o k e i n t o a t h o u s a n d p i e c e s | asteria aurora winston-lightwood
a n d t h e y a l l w e n t s k i p p i n g a b o u t | asteria ; briar-rose pffft
a n d n o w w h e n e v e r y n e w b a b y i s b o r n i t s f i r s t l a u g h b e c o m e s a f a i r y | sixteen
s o t h e r e o u g h t t o b e o n e f a i r y f o r e v e r y b o y o r g i r l | female
a n d t h a t w a s t h e b e g i n n i n g o f f a i r i e s | district one

“ e v e r y t i m e a c h i l d s a y s , ' i d o n ' t b e l i e v e i n f a i r i e s , ' t h e r e i s a f a i r y s o m e w h e r e t h a t f a l l s d o w n d e a d¹ ”

Mirrors are delightful little things, she thought as her thin, careful fingers

[/color] slowly wrapped around the handle, enclosing the gleaming silver with her own clammy hand. As each decorative curve digs in her palm, she forces a smile too confused to be beautiful,[/color] no matter how much Narcia tells her that, "yes, see that faerie over there? You are as beautiful as her, perhaps even more." But the only near-similarity she herself has seen was how the sun refused to lend her (and them) its own warm glow. It still wasn't the same though, despite how she could never see where her skin ends and the storybook paper starts, as the magical (perhaps impossible? But hush, don't tell Narcia that, she pleads) creatures flitter and flutter around rose petals and daisy chains. "They come out in the dead of the night, you see, because they're mighty afraid of people like me,"[/color] Asteria ponders. They bask in the light of their Mother Moon, and so their skin becomes iridescent under her pale, holed face. "Sometimes they show themselves to me in the lazy afternoons when no one's around ― except me, of course." Under daylight, it's still a pleasure to have some company, but I would be lying to say that there isn't a teeny-tiny drop of disappointment in her when she realizes that glitter doesn't sparkle off their skin, and instead only gives a silent sheen in response to the blazing brightness (muted and the same old in the eyes of everyone else, but the exact opposite for those who take on the world ― or let the world take on them, inch by inch, pore by pore ― in the motion of a carousel ride.)[/color]

"But they're so different from me, Narcia. That's it, different," she whispers.

Aren't you different, too, Asteria?

She brings the mirror onto her face and sees the creases that held her light, unkempt eyebrows down and together in the eternal bond of uncertainty, the nose that turns up to the blue sky and away from her reality. Her eyes should have been the color of the grass she tangles her fingers with, but it was clouded with gray and so far away. She didn't see herself in the mirror, but instead saw her reflection on a winter's frozen moor.

There was once a time in her life when the bare soles of her dirty feet didn't clung only to the soil of her own garden-haven, when snowflakes landed on the tip of her nose and eventually in between her lips, slowly turning blue, now finally knowing that snow didn't taste like glue. The children that passed her home had cherub lips and round cheeks that made her think of angels, and so she followed them in hopes of finding another heaven. Though they wore their knitted wool and mittens and boots, they were shivering to the bone, unlike Asteria who wore mist and frozen breaths for shawls. But the faeries saw her, and called for her attention, and soon enough she forgot about the angels and went clamoring for the sparkles.

This is the story of a girl who had winged creatures for a compass, following their trail in the District One's expanse. The bare evergreens clawed at her dress, but the fabric of her winter gown (a secondhand apparel painted with old flowers and mended with colors) proved to withstand the distress. They called out, "no, Asteria, don't!" but it was too late when the girl stumbled out of the world.

She awoke, a couple minutes later, when the faeries started making a home out of her golden hay hair and some weaved dried winter flowers to make her pretty for her death. Asteria pardoned them, of course, for they were friends and friends only assume for the best. Her tired eyes were weary (for she was awake in other world) but she rubbed life back into them, taking away the snow nestled in between her pale lashes. Then she discovered she was in a winter wonderland, a place she had never truly seen in her miniature garden, but in the barren woods she saw the snow breathe new life into the corpse of trees. Her soles tingled under the fresh coat of winter's tears (and underneath that, footprints of the ones who defied and flee) as she stumbled to touch the frozen lake, where the wanderers glided in exaltation ― of course, when they weren't dying of starvation.

She dropped to all fours, because she was sure that underneath that was a castle carved from ice ― and everyone knows that royalty shouldn't be provoked! She crouched and peered, and to her own shock, her own curious face peeked right back, with the hollowed bones and jutting lips. The final thing she saw was how she slowly leaned in as though to kiss her hello, frostbitten fingertips and the frayed ends of her hair greeting the ice. "But she's beautiful, I'm not,"[/color] was her last words, mumbled right past through her shutting lips, and out as her cheek chose the lake as her bed.

You see, in this world of hers, cold turns to warmth, and Narcia spins them into bundles of yarn. She wears a black hood, made from shadows, she claimed, and at first she set Asteria off in a frenzy of tears. Hush, hush, my love,[/color] Narcia said as she took the crying girl's face in her hands. The shadows that formed her hood dissipated, and it revealed the face of who Asteria claims to be the most beautiful in the world. She kissed her tears away, and promised that soon, everyone else would, too.

Now, now, my darling. There's nothing to be afraid of; if only you would stay with me for―[/color]

"Not now, Narcia! Someone's here!"

Asteria woke up to see a beautiful maiden with fire resting on her head, whose white-washed skin too didn't glisten, never while under the winter's nonexistent sun. She got close enough to see that the girl held something in her eyes, and as it twinkled she gasped, "You have the constellations in your eyes."

But as soon as she said that, the star-eyed girl scrambled towards the woods and as Asteria longingly (already) looked after the fleeting girl, figure dissipating between dried branches and trunks, she couldn't be too sure whether her own eyes had fooled her: hidden behind the thicket of nature's dead darlings was a ghost of a double. They were the mirror images of each other, and perhaps they were connected that in such a way, one piece of one was also another's, and what would be gone of one would be taken away from another.

And perhaps if one runs away, another comes running after.

She had left the cold and its soon-to-be-thawing landscape in her mind and behind her irises, transported back to the time where she no longer followed those cherubs (who were a trick of the falling bits of ice, as she was positively sure that they could only be a one single blushing bundled child, and so on grew to be so stained with the dirt, blood, and more filth)[/color], where the expanse was far from a walk (with bare feet, nonetheless), and her beloved sisters ― from beds with tumbled sheets ― now slept six feet underneath her own.[/color][/justify]



c o d e w o r d | Odair
a n d w h i l e h e r f a c e | savannah burton
r e m a i n s t r u e , l i k e s t a t u e | adopted lightwoods plot
i t b r e a k s | ¹ - various quotes by j.m. barrie from the book peter pan; ² - quote by tori amos

i f w e l i s t e n | narration; 968164
w o u l d w e h e a r | speaking; B1AF76
h e r c r i e s | others; F4C56B
t h a t b u r y t h e m s e l v e s | emphasis; D3BD74
i n h e r m i n d ? | thoughts; 915C57

a n a u t h o r ' s n o t e | january 11, 2013 - edited the template <3[/blockquote][/size][/blockquote]