A young girl with pale green eyes and hair like midnight whimpers under a metal table in a half-finished house. Blood runs down her arms as purple blotches form under her skin. Voices echo in her head – the voices of a man and a woman, yelling and screaming, depositing fault and punishment as they see fit. The stench of alcohol permeates the air, clinging to her nose like a sweet, swooning venom. As tears run down her face, she drags herself out from under the desk and into the entrance of the house, looking out into the rough, unfinished steel streets. Sweat mixes with blood and tears, staining her skin like grime.
The girl flinches as the voices ricochet off the solid walls of her mind. I was talking to you, girl… we… should just kill her now, before… eats so much, too much… can't afford to waste money on a pile of garbage...
Another flinch, this time as she gently presses her leg with a trembling, fragile, thin little hand. She stifles a yelp as a bolt of pain shoots down her leg. Sighing, the girl drags herself out into the street, a child's fingers pulling barely visible dents into steel, and looks up at the partial platinum domes, flower petals in the sky. It has been so long since she last slept without having to worry about not waking up; so much time has passed since the people meant to be her family have been happy.
The stars were beautiful tonight. The girl looks up at the sky, marvelling at just how clear it is this winter evening. The haze of twilight has faded away, yielding itself to darkness. A clean, brisk wind blows against her face, bringing with it an odd sense of peace, a feeling of certainty, like this is where she is meant to be. Up high, she sees forceful gusts of spirit-wind – the fabled gales high enough only for master airbenders to ride, safe only for them to breathe – trailing creases of clouds behind them.
The youth begins to lose track of time moments into her enervation. To her weary, hazy mind, each second that passes could be an eternity, every minute a day, every hour a second. She does not care; she cannot care. She just floats in ennui, lost in the feeling of pain and fear-turned-apathy. Her hold on thought and motivation slackens until the fire that by all rights should burn bright and warm within her soul is little more than a whisper from a fading spirit.
Hours later, the girl with the black hair begins to realize that the cold has seeped through her flimsy rags, piercing her skin and throbbing deep in her bones like a dull ache. She cannot help but feel tired. After all, she reasons, life in this world is just so… tiring, and she is but a little girl, alone under the stars. The voices have left her mind – they, like everything else, abandon her in the end. She almost smiles at that, the closest thing to a full thought she has gathered tonight, trying to acknowledge what she might know to be irony, had circumstances been kinder. That almost-smile is swept away by pain-betrayal-stop-caring-it-hurts.
The girl with the green eyes wills herself to keep them open. Regardless, the thick, heavy lids droop down, until they half cover the pale jades of her young orbs. She knows that she should fight, that she should try to move, but the apathy drains the will from her soul like the cold does her strength. If life had been gentler, if she could be stronger… but life is cruel, and she is weak. As she looks up to the sky one last time, she dreams of a warm hearth, a kind home, a forgiving life. Her eyes begin to descend, close just one last time. This time, she really does smile.
The stars were beautiful tonight.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A young boy with fire in his eyes and hair like ash walks with his parents, hand-in-hand, thoughts brushing over a brother back at home. Blood rushes through his form like lightning. Voices echo in his head – the events of the opera, playing themselves over and over, blurring together as memory is bound to do. The smells of the city, the stench of the gutters and the smoke of cigarettes and Satomobiles, fade with the rain, a clean odor surging into his lungs. While he runs ahead of his parents, they smile at their elder child, holding each other as they walk down the cobbled sidewalk. Lightning erupts, thunder following in its wake.
The boy cries out as he slips on slick stone, small hands coming out an instant too late. His parents rush over to help him as little trails of red run from his knees. He holds in tears as his mother smiles at him and kisses his forehead, his father already pulling out his handy first-aid kit and fishing for a small bandage. Father ruffles son's wet hair as he fastens the white pads to scraped knees. The family – incomplete yet whole – smiles as one, the downpour drenching everything from the father's red scarf to the mother's pale shawl.
One last wince, this time as he makes to stand, and all three are on their feet walking once more. However, the boy senses that feeling of not-quite-right, that smallest imbalance to his settings, and he stops to take in the world around him. The lights of the city are now bright in the distance, and the little group is in a slightly dilapidated locale. Lights gutter in and out around them, casting strange, contorted shapes on the ground. The buildings are crushed together like some evil being had taken them up in one hand and pressed them with his fist. The only space between them is in the labyrinth of narrow alleyways stretching behind apartments and businesses, spread like spidery veins on some haggard, lost creature. However, only one form truly grabs the boy's attention – a form emerging from the darkness of one such alley. Spears of lightning fork through the sky, raindrops pounding on the ground as the happy parents turn to see what is catching their older boy's attention. There, flickering in shadow like some evil spirit from the stories, stands a man, a pike of white-hot fire dancing in his hand.
The rain fell like blood tonight. It runs down the man's face, rivulets of black water pouring over his features, coursing like veins down his entire form. The boy stares in horror at the figure before him, like a monster ready to feast, covered in gore. The man turns just barely, the blaze glinting off his eyes just as it stains the torrent deep red. Despite the deluge, his bolt of fire burns strong. A crazed look darts through his eyes as he demands the group hand him all their money, all their valuables. The boy nearly whimpers at the mien of the man's features, the clammy cold of the rain seeping into his bones despite the blood rushing through him. The boy's parents, hands in motions of pacification and surrender, comply. The first thing to go is his mother's purse, made to look like expensive leather, that of the ladies at the opera; the mugger takes all the valuables from it and drops the bag on the ground. Then his father's wallet disappears into the man's deep pockets. Finally, the eight yuans of allowance he had been given by his parents as birthday money go into the man's large gloved hand.
Before the boy with the ashy hair can even cry out, his father begins to fall, a searing hole torn through his heart. Dead, prying hands claw at the depths of the boy's inner fire, demanding for his will, his strength. As he collapses to his knees, mere feet from his father, the man unleashes a storm of fire upon his mother. She slips into the psyche of a soldier, the only goal to make sure her son emerges from this encounter alive. She wards off the blows, silhouetted to the boy's eyes by the lightning striking rooftops far on high. Thoughts cleared from her stormy mind, she summons the fire of the cold blood, sparks like the sky above brewing at her fingertips. Only her son sees the flash of metal like lightning jumping from the man's pocket into his hand. They both hear the bang of blasting jelly, see the flash of the explosion that propels metal from a barrel. The man is forgotten, fading into the labyrinthine hell from which he came, as the woman falls to the ground atop her husband.
A soul-tearing pain, the sound of a thousand screams rips through the spirit of the boy with the fiery eyes as two of the only important people in his life settle on the wet concrete. He falls onto the absent body of his father, onto the dying form of his mother, mind too blank to scream. Tears stream freely down his face. The rain runs down the fading form of his mother as blood – yes, blood, he affirms to himself – bubbles from her chest, her mouth. She tries to say something – I love you, he thinks it might be, or Be strong – but resolves in the end to close her lips and smile peacefully at her son. The boy looks on in horror, shock, anger, rage, terror as she closes her eyes. The torrent mixes with the blood gushing from the wound, red flowing down to mingle with the crimson of his father's scarf.
The rain fell like blood tonight.