Sihnon was an ocean of light when night fell sharply, and a world of suffocating smog filled skies as day rolled through. She could remember the narrow little home with slanted door frames and thin windows that had spider web cracks set through.
She would spend young days looking out cool windows, tracing her fingertips upon the grimy surface. Within the home were a man that yelled to loud, and woman whom dissolved beneath his rage.
"What are you doing, Ina?" Soft voice fell harshly, grey walls smothering the delicate words. Her sister's eyes were dark like a storm settling, smooth like the ocean-that-was.
She sighs. Rests her forehead against the glass, imaging the sea swept beneath her. "Thinking."
"Father isn't coming home tonight." The voice falls flat, and suddenly she can feel relief blossoming. Relief tanged sharp with bitterness and resentment, livid and warped. Skewed beneath a world of quick beauty, savaged by truth.
"He's probably away with those women again."
Exhale, inhale. Breath.
"Maybe he'll stay away."
Ina looked away from the window. "I don't understand how she could love a man like Father."
"I hope we never do such a thing." Hana grimaced, wincing in pain. She rolled her shoulders, and moved away.
Ina looked up at the girl, older by three years. "I hope so."
"What do you hope for," She appeared, leaning against the slanted doorframe. Woman of dark hair and cracked lips, a monument to once-upon-a-time beauty. "You can tell me." She wraps a blanket around her narrow frame, leaning with a sway.
Ina swallows her words, gazing past the sunken cheeks and glazed eyes. Bone sickness, was what the Doctor declared. Months, maybe. Trickling past like sand falling from hands. "Nothing, mama."
"Hana, this true? What have you two girls been speaking of?"
Hana cringes, bowing her head. She says nothing, not even when the woman screams wicked curses. Only after, does she dare to speak. "Nothing. We were just looking at the sky."
Ina wishes it doesn't matter. Pretends it doesn't matter. The skies so grey and thick that not even stars can pierce through, and for some reason it makes her head throb and heart heavy. "Wishing for the stars, that's all."
The woman that isn't really woman-just sick creature with rotting bones. "Filth. My only regret in this world was for you to take my blood."
Her words hurt. A mix of resentment and illness taking over who she was.
(She pretends it doesn't matter, not even when eleven days after the horrible incident that leaves Hana beaten and broken when her mother finally dies of poisoning. Three days after, even, when they find her father in the gutter with his throat slit.)
X
They ship her off to a school out in the country. Right before the burial, the one she doesn't wish to go to. Hana was already taken to the hospital, funded by a wealthy man who was intrigued by the dark eyes that promised storms and sweeping oceans.
Already death was filling her body, stealing her beloved sister from her.
Here she was taught how to lie. It was claimed as control, but nothing more than a lie. They lined her eyes, penciled her lips. They spritzed perfumes upon her wrists, and gently forced her spine straight and voice lower.
She wrote letters, her short writings forming elegant scripts of pleasantries. Became close to the girls her age, and tried to forget about the father with the belt; the mother with death fouling her words.
"Inar, your clothes are prepped for you." The woman smiled softly, bowing her head. Curls twisted back with a ribbon laced through.
She smiles, lifting her head slightly. "Thank you very much."
The stars are so bright above, shining through the blues and greys. They shine like liars above the stone gardens where the young girls meditate. The lawns are trimmed and gardened, with smooth porches where she is free to wander.
The rooms are wide and high roofed, and the windows are glossed and polished. She can see an entire world before her-a world where beauty is the currency and truth is the addition.
(Her sister's letters have despair caught in the corners, a broken heart bleeding in the wreckage of an ill body. "He weds me tomorrow. I will join the seclusion of his other wives. The fifth.")
She clings to those words, remembering grimy windows that looked into a heavy world of such filth. She graces a new world with a new name. Inar Inar Inar Inar Inar. It's like a song that can't be broken, and she's almost content dancing to it.
Ina, it's so horrible here. I'm getting worse, but he won't pay for anymore treatments.
She begins to earn money. She allows herself to become an item, beautiful with soft dark eyes that are nothing more than curtains. Men want her, the way she stands like a victim.
She pays for the operations, for the shiny pills that make everything alright.
(Hana dies eight weeks after her birthday despite everything.)
X
They discover a strange sighting in a scan.
She bristles, and tells them to leave her for a few moments.
In those minutes she's already packed most of her items and made plans to scour for a living. She can ride out on customers and the bottles hopes and dreams she locked away since childhood. Inar becomes Inara, draped within the luxury of an entire expanse that it her own to discover.
She packs a sword, and visits her family's grave. She says good bye to her sister, and damns those that birthed her.
Inara just wants to depart. Detach.
So she does. Hops on a ship that's beat up and torn up, and tries to ignore the dull pain that courses through her veins. How her body becomes stiff, and she is slowly shrinking. The crew is nice. A pilot that makes her laugh and the woman that makes her want to be strong. A girl who she wants to mother, and a man that infuriates her.
The captain is another story-one she has no time for.
(The medicine is burning a hole through her, and all she can do is stare at the stars.)
"I've never wanted to die," she says quietly, tracing a hand over thick glass. Grey walls and slanted doors with shadowed figures that broke the smaller ones. Schools with smooth rock gardens and delicate windows, with stars so false above.
The ship is a driving force through the wreckage of worlds. She finds nothing but dusty faces and lost faith. Her bones rot slowly, and she can feel herself losing a battle that never began.
Hana's eyes fill her some nights, and she is submerged in the agony of this all.
Somewhere beneath all this beauty and glimmer, there's a scrawny little girl living in a grimy apartment.