what they think we are | { nova/petal}

I had learned to avoid mirrors, for reflections of my face showed only the failures behind me. Silver trophies like the hair of a girl out shadowed by her sister's raven locks, and the only thing I had ever been truly gifted at was beauty. An easy smile, inviting eyes-- that thing that made boys weak in the knees. Just pretty. Just Petal and her roses and the inhibiting expectation to be an art project worth millions every time I stepped out the door.

Pyrite probably laughed at who I had become. A ghost of a girl next to someone so alive, and she never cared to follow rules. She was marrying the boy I once had eyes for, living the life people expected me to live. By now, I should have thrown my hands up and accepted that she would always be better. I was pretty. She was that and more.

But what might my parents have said if I had acted the way my sister did? Marrying for love instead of status, or being found with spirits on my breath and a boy asleep next to me? No, I was meant to be a second place trophy, for bystanders to gawk at and swoon. And in a place so full of people stuck on the superficial, my only solace was to hide where they could not find me. Not my parents, or my sister, or the strangers. And as my feet dangled from the rooftop, knife in my hands, I watched them all below me, blissfully unaware of my existence. None of them even realized what a weapon I could have been.

I could have dropped this knife at any second and ended a life, but wearing pink brings out my eyes, and that is what I was supposed to care about.

It was nice to be the watchman for a change.

Sweat made the back of my neck sticky, my chest rising and falling at a quicker rate than normal. Behind me, a lost paradise of silver and red would be found. Weapons littering the ground, most coated in artificial blood, and a fading sun to soon be replaced by night's ever quiet embrace. The sun told stories and everyone listened. The Pyrite to the moon's Petal. I thought, perhaps, if the moon were given the chance, it might have had something to say, so I listened.

I liked what I heard, so I kept going back for more.

A slight change in the air, or a voice in my mind that everyone must have had-- the one that warned lambs of the wolf in their midst-- and I turned to find a good thing waiting behind me. I could remember painting pictures together in art class, and walking home together from school. I could remember family brunches at the park, where our mothers would sit and gossip and we would play make believe on the slides. We were just two little girls then, who had not yet realized who they were expected to become.

I could remember jumping from a dock into a sea of ice water, and even though my lips had turned blue, the smile they shone had been more real than any I offered while passing through the sidewalk. We knew who we were expected to be, and did it still. Because who we were supposed to be was not at all who we were in our dreams, when the night was there to guide us along the stars.

Nova Moreno: A star in her own right, and certainly ready to burn.

"I got a head start, but after last time, I think it's only fair."

I stood from the cliff's edge, buried my knife to the hilt in rooftop gravel, then stepped away. Always a foot's length away from falling, and never brave enough to test my wings. I smiled at Nova, my shoulders pressed to my ears and my eyes wide with excitement. I pulled her into a surely unwanted hug, and grabbed her wrists with both hands.

"Daylight's fading fast, Moreno. Ready for the night?"