Heads up! This chapter is a backstory. It is dark. as. crap. You've been warned. :( Enjoy! :)
"Don't go outside or the monsters will get you!" said a boy before closing his little sister's bedroom door.
"Okay, Isaac," she replied to her big brother. Scared, she crawled out of bed and stared out the window at the jagged and massive mountains. "Monsters?" she muttered to herself. After a while of staring at the stagnant stars, it looked like one of them was falling down. And then she saw it crash into the ground just over a hill. Curiosity got the best of her. She opened her window and jumped out of her small but comfy cabin.
She looked around apprehensively but proceeded with haste over the hill. There she saw a small crater, maybe just the size of a few watermelons, and inside it was a sphere with a dark and ominous glow. She dared not touch it, but instead rushed home to tell her parents and her big brother, Isaac.
"Daddy, mommy!" she came in through the front door.
"Eleanor, what are you doing outside?!" her father exclaimed.
"Something fell, something fell! It's a star!" she told them, causing them all to be confused.
Eleanor, Isaac, and their parents went over the hill to examine this dark sphere.
"My God," her mother stated. "Nobody touch it, understand?"
"What do we do with it?" Isaac asked.
"Who knows what this thing could bring us. I think it's in our best interest to hide it and study it," her father established.
"Come," her mother started with hands on the backs of Isaac and his father, "let's sleep, and we'll tend to this in the morning."
Eleanor lay in bed while her mother sang her old lullaby until she was put to sleep.
The next morning, Eleanor woke to the sight of her father starting construction of a shed around the crater. The sphere had sunken slightly since the previous night. Poking it had no effect; it didn't budge. It felt solid like a metal of some kind.
After another day, the sphere was completely submerged, and the shed halfway complete. Her father decided to leave the unfinished shed unfinished and as is. With the sphere underground, all the family could do is wait and see what befalls them. And what befell them within a couple days was a little sprout right where the sphere was. Within a few weeks, a full tree about the size of a dogwood had grown and sprouted fruits from it's branches. They looked like peaches, only slightly larger and without fuzz.
"Isaac, we've been over this. These fruits came from a mysterious orb that fell from the sky. I cannot begin to understand why you would want to eat one," his mother told him, seeming to be aggravated and even a little bit scared. Isaac just shrugged.
So the family coped with the creepy tree with half a shed surrounding it. They let it be for years and years, and it still looked exactly the same, untarnished, fruits still bright and plump, while the shed around it would fall apart. It began to haunt them. Eleanor's mother finally decided that it's time for one of them to eat one of the fruits. Curiosity got the best of her.
"Here I go," she said as she picked a fruit. Her husband, Isaac, and Eleanor all looked terrified. Nothing could divide their attention. She took a bite out of the fruit. The first thing that happened was the dulling of her eyes. Her skin then appeared to wrinkle and dry up on the spot. Her husband gasped with regret and caught her before she fell to the ground. Almost simultaneously, Isaac and Eleanor yell, "Mom!"
Eleanor's father quickly carried her mother into the cabin and laid her down on his bed.
"How do you feel?!" he asked her urgently.
"Weak," she said. Her voice didn't sound too different.
"Isaac and I are going to get help. Eleanor, do not leave your mother's bedside!"
"I'm right here, mom," she said softly, "I won't leave you, I promise."
Eleanor stood outside the front door of her little cabin looking at the massive mountains in the distance that she had always adored as a child. Her father and brother still had not returned in almost two months. Eleanor did all the farming, cooking, cleaning. It once crossed her mind how easy things would be if she painlessly took her mother's life. But no, that would be evil. She immediately put it out of her mind.
About five months later, there was still no sign of her family. She strangely didn't feel as mournful as she thought she would in this type of scenario.
"Let it all out," Eleanor tried to comfort her as she regurgitated. Her mother had developed quite a belly and was expected to give birth in just a matter of weeks. Eleanor would often sing to her mother the lullaby that was sung to her, which her mother told her of its subtle dark and gloomy message.
"Mother! Eleanor!" they heard one day from outside. Eleanor immediately hopped up and ran outside.
"Isaac?! Where's father?" Eleanor asked her older brother
"He didn't make it," he put bluntly while trying to catch his breath, "They all thought we were loony and- and-," he began to sob. Eleanor led him in to show him their new baby sibling coming, which cheered him up a bit.
Soon a new sibling was on the way. Eleanor successfully delivered their dark brown-eyed baby brother. But not long enough after the boy was born, their mother passed away. Isaac mourned over the tragic loss and Eleanor tried to comfort him. After the burial of their parents, they swore to raise their baby brother and never split up.
That night, Eleanor stood in the doorway of her little cabin, staring intently at the tip of that damned tree. Isaac sang their old lullaby to the baby, and suddenly a dark and ominous glow emanated from the tree.
"Isaac!" she gasped after turning around. The singing had stopped. She barged in to check on them. Isaac stood completely still. "Isaac...?" She was terrified.
Isaac collapsed in front of her. With a shaky gasp, she ran up to him and listened up against his chest to the silence of his dead heart. She got up and looked down at the baby. A single tear fell on his forehead. The baby's eyes were jet black. He was blissfully unaware of what was happening. His eyes regressed back to his dark brown.
Without hesitating or saying a word, Eleanor reached down and squeezed her baby brother's neck until he fell completely still.
