Our worlds are named after the greatest Gods that ever lived. Our religions are varied, our lives different from one another. We are all separate by belief and by view. Our eyes want to process what they find pleasure upon. We are not skins with skeletons in us, we are brains within a skeleton surrounded by skin. By ichor. We are Gods. We are Kings and Queens. We are adventurers. We are explorers. We are leaders on our own and within our own. We are the wise men in the group and the Warriors in battles. We our space travelers by night, storing memories and events of our past life within the stars all through closed eyes. Deep in the universe. We are almost immortal.


"People don't change overnight." It was low, but still carried a heavy weight with years of war in it.

"I did. I changed overnight." My eyes were still locked on the fire in front of us, watching the yellow flicker and the embers falling to the ground. Her eyes shifted to me, to stare. I feel them. They are looking at me as if I am a blank canvas and they are a pallet of paint. It made an uneasy feeling brew in me, pushing my head and my eyes to meet hers. Neither spoke, the words were there. They were written on invisible torn papers that hung on light strings, waiting to be picked like rose petals in spring. I had no intention on grabbing one, but in my head I saw her arm reach up and yank one off sadly. Her eyes don't leave mine, the words on the invisible paper seep through her skin like ink and make their way into her veins. Then, like the venom that lays under the tongue of a snake, they come out and hit me in the face.

"You would sleep better if you weren't so weak. Then, that way, you wouldn't be up in the darkest skies of the night, thinking of all your wrong doings and letting them feed off of your brightness." They sting at me the same way alcohol stings on a cut. There's two kinds of people. The ones who bite their tongue at the stinging sensation, and the ones who thrash like animals when their predator bites down on their neck. I'm that animal, except, my predator was slower tonight, less expecting of a hit such as the one I was delivering. It was quick, but it was also a mistake. My knuckles had not fully healed from the earlier connection with an attackers face, they were fresh opened wounds that I only seemed to make worse. There is also the fact that while she might not have expected the hit, it's doesn't take long for her to react either. Her other hand, the one that wasn't holding on to her bleeding nose, blocked my fist which was on its way to crash against her face once more but failed and was pushed against the wet and muddy ground above my head. I felt my other one in the same position as her body hovered over mine, her hips pinning me down and her knees on either side of my waist. I felt a strong sensation on my right temple before her once grey eyes turned black along with the rest of the world around us.

Then suddenly, much like space, it was dark.


Before there was Earth, before there was the sun and any concept of light, there was darkness. In that darkness there was a strong voice that shook with want and with desire. But most of all, with determination. And that voice said, "Let there be light", and so there was light. A light so strong and so powerful that it created life. It held the smallest to the largest beings. It held the universe and it held the stars and the galaxies. It held our home. Our bodies were in that light, our emotions and our actions to come. They were all brewed within it. That powerful voice created Gods and Men. It gave the Gods a power and a duty to fulfill, but that is all. It did not bother to set rules for these Gods to follow. So the Gods did as they wished, and so fear was born in the heads of men. It was a fear that created cruelty that controlled our actions towards one another. A fear so strong that it is impossible to think beyond it, to think of something softer and less deathly. This fear has been spread like a disease much alike to that of the Black Death for millions of generations. It kills us in our sleep and it kills us in wars. It makes us feel powerless when we put such a strong front to be powerful. We think we can surpass it, but no, that was not the intentions of the Gods. They wanted us to live with it. To die with it. To reincarnate with it. The moment the thumping in our chest begins, so does the fear. It's no stranger to me, the weight of it pushing down on me like the armor of a Knight, reminding me that while it may guard me and help me make brass decisions, it is also what will one day kill me.

Sometimes I listen to the elders here in Polis telling these stories of enemies falling at the hands of small soldiers and I think of the small chunks that they play in my life. Those who have fallen and those who continue to live due to the unspeakable acts that fear has made me do. It's almost tiring, really, washing my hands everyday only to see more blood on them after drying them off. Some might say that the water I drink and bathe in is not water at all, but blood itself. I do not wish to frighten people, trust me I don't. But the whispers are so loud, and they spread so fast. Every soul that breathes across the darkest woods and the deepest seas knows who I am. They will meet me one day and their heart will stop while they knees give out and their hands clasp together as their heads bow down. I'm a God trapped in the body of a girl. I am someone with power. Some of the whispers call me "Athena…"

But I'm just Clarke.