Light. Blinding, searing light. She squirmed in her blanket and buried her head under the folds. But the light shone through, and hurt her skin. She wailed for her mother, but no one answered. Unaccustomed to being ignored, she gazed around plaintively, but her mother and sister were nowhere in sight. The nursery was in ruins, broken by the sheer force of the light, and limp forms flopped on the ground were the only other things in the room.
Then footsteps shook the ground as glowing white beings appeared out of the brightness. She squinted and covered her eyes with one pudgy baby hand. The beings converse in hushed tones, as they draw nearer. She crawls over to one of the forms and takes refuge in it's shadow, the darkness like a balm on burned skin. It smells familiar. "Mama?" she asks quietly. It is her mother. But the baby somehow knows that she's different. That's she's dead, along with her sister. She howls, but softly, as her survival skills are already kicking in.
The forms come closer, and she quails in fear. One crouches down to the ground and sniffs her mother's head deeply. "Dead." it says in a satisfied voice. "That's all of them." And tears run down the baby's face as her worst fear—or what is, at this early moment, her worst fear—is confirmed.
"Wait." The second being has approached. It stares with blazing eyes of pure light, right at the spot where she hides. "Nevermind." The beings stalk away on legs made of light so bright it is solid, and disappear. The light fades, leaving all consuming, comforting darkness.
She has done it. She has survived and hidden, though she does not understand how.
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Astria Stargazer woke up in a sweat, sitting straight up. She looked around wildly for a moment, then remembered where she was. She patted the ground and grabbed a makeshift knife, made out of cut tin. Breathing heavily, Astria stood up and brushed herself off. The ground was cold and dirty, with uncomfortable knots in the wrong places, but sleeping in the wild for the best part of her life had made Astria tough and resilient. She could sleep anyway. If the nightmares didn't come.
They were getting worse. She was now waking in terror, panicked, with mysterious burns on her arms and legs. Astria never remembered what the nightmares were about; they were just blurs of pain and sorrow and fear and anger. Yes. Anger. Anger even then, for she was sure it was a long time ago, if these things had ever taken place.
Astria was angry about a lot of things; her mother, for dying; her father (whoever he was), for never showing up; the social workers whose efforts to take her to a foster home were carefully evaded every time; and most of all, the world who had scorned her and burned her and hurt her and, once that was all finished, had thrown her out on the streets to fend for herself, from year to year to year.
Anger was a good thing. It helped her survive.
