Buried in greed, a coffin of green, the day that Adora met Lily Avangarde, she discovers something new.
At first, she can't quite put the name to it. How could she when Adora had her mother and her music? She thought she had everything she could have ever wanted.
But that's the thing about growing up. The world gets bigger while the heart grows greedier.
The word stays nestled into the back of her throat.
It's a simple word, truly.
Envy.
It starts slow.
Envy is patient, after all. The slow drip of poison into the river. Slow and swept away by its force, by the rushing tide till it starts tainting everything.
Adora's envy is like that.
Once the first tide is poisoned, it is only a matter of time.
It seeps into her life as if she has simply drawn another breath, and there it is, the taste lingering in the back of her throat.
what wretched thing is swallowed by envy for her friend?
It makes her feel almost guilty. Truthfully, Adora has never been one to wear it often. Instead, she prefers the shades of longing, the sweetness of love.
But, every year, when April comes calling, when spring comes and blows them a kiss, envy kisses her too.
It kisses her softly when teachers ask for students to confirm their parent's attendance for the annual concerts, and everyone says yes as if it is the simplest thing in the world.
And envy chokes the very life out of her every time M. Avangarde would kiss his daughter's forehead after a concert in which the seats she had reserved for her parents remain empty in a sea of familial love.
It cuts a striking image: two lone seats surrounded by parents eyeing it with something almost like pity and disdain. Dust has long since settled on the stiff velvet of the chairs. Untouched. Unclaimed.
The Academy knows how to rub salt into wounds. Knows how to turn the smallest, slightest thing into a competition, to dress its own hierarchy till students are nothing but wolves tearing themselves for the smallest scab of glory.
Adora sometimes loathes it.
Especially when it comes to their annual fundraising concert.
The students had to write a program for the night addressed to their parents, and though Adora takes great care in writing each one on fine paper and emerald ink, they never reached their intended.
In contrast, one had to push M. Avangarde out of the waiting wings and into the audience. Lily's mother is an active sponsor of the school activities, always the first to support her daughter in everything she does.
Their seats, so polished by use that the velvet has grown soft, are always filled.
Filled with love.
Filled with want.
Adora wants it too
"My parents are there," Lily points out from their spot, violins tucked on the knees as they wait. She waves, and they wave back. Perhaps not eagerly, but they do not flinch away from their daughter's brightness. For all of their professed decorum, for the pride they dress themselves as if it is a corset of regulations, the Avangarde are very free with their love.
It is overflowing, as if one is trying to use a glass to contain the ocean and they miserably fail.
Adora is buried in emerald green by the mere thought. A thought bites her. Savagely. Like a rabid dog as she stares at Lily's beaming smile.
Why couldn't it be me?
Lily's new bracelet shines in front of the projector's lights, love cuffed to her right wrist.
why couldn't it be me?!
Watching my friend be loved by her parents
made me resentful.
I resented their effortless laughter.
I resented their unconditional adoration.
It makes me sorrowful.
It makes me confused.
How could such love be granted so easily
yet has never touched the steps of my home?
Most childhood memories are stored within pictures, crinkled from repeated viewing and aged by time and the sun's rays.
They are beloved relics, that childhood of ours immortalized in its fleeting glory. We blink, it's gone, and all we have to remember is those smiles and the rush of youthful blindness.
That and whatever the pictures immortalized.
Only not for Adora.
No, Adora's childhood was a grave. It is a grave, she thinks. The tenses become blurry sometimes, and time becomes a scale she tries to walk but forgets.
It is funny.
Poems have always written pain as beautiful.
Blood as scarlet ink.
Thick, the tethering of a violent edge of the world, the bleeding of our despair into the unforgiving earth and painting it crimson.
But Adora has realized that for all of those pretty words laced together into a grief-stricken painting, it does not change the fact that pain is pain.
Blood is blood, whether it is shed on the pristine white snow or the stones of an empty road.
It is a tragedy.
And no writer can make it better.
Adora has forgotten how many times she has died since the first time.
Sometimes, Adora dies at the hands of monsters. Those times, Mother tries to protect her. But as much as a daughter cannot save her mother, a mother cannot save her daughter.
Not from life's cruelty.
Not from Death.
It is like the monsters are eager, desperate to cut Adora's life short before she gets to grow, to settle into her skin, and perhaps, become a threat. Desperate to kill the embers of a fire that should have grown. Only it doesn't because Gods enjoy its flickering, the hues of orange and red.
Adora sometimes dies because of monsters.
But those aren't the only times.
Some of those her mother knows of. Those happen in the early rise of Dawn, while Apollo drives his carriage across the sky when Adora simply doesn't wake up. It happened once after Adora had drunk the bitter drink Mother seemed so fond of. Drunk and drowned in it. Those times, Mother shakes her awake. Not crying - it is something much more than that, like glass that is about to shatter and cut everyone with its shards - but there is sorrow in her gaze and something that almost tastes like gratefulness as Adora gasps for air, alive once more.
Mother has never been one to thank the Gods, but Adora thinks she has never been closer to it than in those short moments.
Other times, Adora dies because of small, trivial things. She forgets. Once, it was because she was chasing Lily's ghost. Too caught with the shine of her smile, the small dark-haired girl walks in front of a car.
Her bones are crushed before she can scream.
Another death, she thinks, is because she falls from a tree.
snap
gasp
The cycle continues. It never breaks, never falters. Air comes to her as easily as it leaves her a hollow shell for a time.
Adora is fine.
Truly.
She is fine.
father stops visiting
mother stops smiling
As for Adora, their daughter, she learns to swallow the fractures of her family whole, to bear them like a cross—her own sin, her own pain. She grows fonder of it, too, of that pain that leashes her to the reality that has cut her so.
Adora's hands grow coarse—a far cry from the softness that her toddler years afforded her. Mother, after all, has grown harsher in the teachings of a half-blood life, has put a knife to Adora's hands, and never allowed the child to drop it.
you have to survive, Adora, Mother commands her daughter. Her voice cracks and trembles as she continues. You cannot leave me. Stay.
Adora nods.
The blade draws beautifully on her flesh. it makes her remember. Mother drinks more often, too. To forget, she claims when Adora asks her about it.
Perhaps that is their curse, one that lingers in their blood. A wound for a wound and the desire for it. Because that is all they know.
your mother
is in the habit of offering a love you can never quite understand
a sickness dressed into the glamour of a cure
your father is absent
you are a war
the border between two countries
the collateral damage
the paradox that joins the two
but also splits them apart.
- milk and honey
The monster comes swiftly on them.
It's been weeks since it started its haunt, and unlike mortals, it does not falter in its quest, wearing its bloodlust-like venom.
One of the nine heads draws higher.
It lashes out.
Adora can feel its breath on her skin. It blisters, cracks under it and she smothers a scream. Mother is limping too, her arm twisted and cracked, the bone of her forearm poking out of the bloody skin.
"Adora," she breathes hoarsely.
Adora stares, eyes wide and afraid.
It's-
It's the first time that she is scared
since lily's death
since she was first eaten alive
"Mom-" she chokes out a sob, pained and half agonized. momomoomomom She will make it better, right? She has to. It's Mother.
"Adora-" Mother's voice grows urgent, shrill and there's something truly wretched and afraid in her emerald gaze as she extends a hand. "ADORA!"
Mother's hand is warm with blood as it yanks Adora into her arms.
The blonde pushes Adora's head into the crook of her neck, her arms wound out tight as if they are a shield, the best that she can give.
And poison swallows them whole.
Adora wakes up.
"Mom?" It trembles, tumbles from her mouth alongside a spitful of blood. Nothing answers her. Only the howl of the wind. "Mom?!"
nonononononon not again not again
please
not again
"Maman-?" Adora calls out. No one answers. The sun blinds her eyes, mocking her. Ash lingers on her tongue. "Maman?"
Adora will always remember that day.
The day she called for her mother till her throat is scratched and dry, her voice reduced to a pathetic rasp and all she can taste is the blood that she shares with her mother.
"Maman-?"
She blinks.
Something is holding her.
It is stiff, burned horribly with some of the skin having melted till you could see the bone underneath.
It's cold.
Mother's hand is cold.
Like Death's grip, a corpse clinging to life. The little girl gasps something fragile - a sob and a cry all at once - as she tries to stumble away, but the dead does not let go. She tries to take her arm back and shakes it till bones break, the sound echoing as it makes Adora flinch.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes to her mother, swallowing a gag as she sees her mother's broken fingers.
She did that.
Adora did that.
Gods, what is wrong with her?
"I'm sorry I wasn't better -" Adora falls to her knees, into the puddle of blood that grows underneath her beloved mother like a lake, a pond of scarlet that could have been beautiful on the stones of the empty road. "I'll be better, I promise, I'll make you proud, just-" She takes a breath. It tastes like copper and ashes and everything wrong in this world. The plea rolls down from her tongue, half broken already and fragile as glass. "Just come back."
Mother doesn't answer. She cannot, even if she were still alive, the poison having eaten away the flesh of her face, melting her eyes and most of her mouth.
In contrast, Adora is almost untouched by Death. But she can still fear the poison lick at her flesh, the agonizing burn that swallowed her whole.
The dark-haired girl feels her mother's loss keenly. Like a gaping wound. Like a heart half buried already.
Don't leave me, Adora.
Mother's voice echoes, her plea clear.
Adora must listen.
She always has.
"Father-" a sob chokes her. "Father. Give me Mother back-" she pleads. "Give me my mother back, please-"
An echo responds to her. I
t almost sounds like her Father.
I cannot
There is no apology. No comfort nor condolence. Instead, it is a simple denial, brisk and dry, the clear shutting of the door to her face.
It is like a slap she takes.
Bitterness swells in her mouth, it curls her fingers into fists. Or maybe it is anger, she does not know. Only that it tastes familiar, as if it has lingered around her for a while, maybe her entire life.
What good is a God if he cannot save those he loves?
What good is a God that has no need for its believers?
Ah.
He hasn't loved Mother, has he?
You do not abandon the people you love.
You do not hurt them.
Lily might be gone, six feet deep under, yet her words stay. They linger, shines a new light that somehow makes the shadows scarier, sharper.
Never trust a God's love, Adora, Mother whispers into the crook of her ear. They do not know how to.
It hurts.
Like a burn.
An unstitched wound.
The death of a star.
Father mustn't have loved her either because, otherwise, the pain in her chest would have vanished beneath his fingers and would have been soothed by Death's coldness.
But it wasn't love.
It is as Mother said. Gods do not know love, not in the way that mortals do. Adora wonders if she knows it too or if her godly blood has clouded her mind and blinded her to its might. After all, she has learned of love through Lily. The daughter cannot know what her parents have never given.
A passing fancy, her mother had accused. A passing fancy, her daughter echoes, the accusation ringing clear within her heart.
Gods will be Gods.
"If not-" her voice grows desperate, its innocence having long since died at the feet of her mother's corpse. "Then take me with you."
Wind howls.
Father remains silent.
"Please-" she begs. There is no answer. She is alone. She doesn't want to be. Please. "FATHER, PLEASE TAKE ME TOO."
They told me you were gone and I screamed.
I wailed. I cried and I screamed. As loud as I could. I had hoped that if you could hear me screaming on your way to the underworld, you would turn around and come back for me.
And bring me with you.
It would have been a kindness.
But I am a child.
Since when has the world been kind?
AUTHOR NOTE: Heyy guys! I just wanted to thank everyone for the love, the comments my story is receiving, it really means the world to me and I am so glad you guys like that little idea of mine.
Stay tuned because there's another update coming with this one!
Thank you guys again for everything,
Lots of love, Daph.