Children of Stardust Part 2

The symbolic journey of a girl fighting depression brought on by a world that just won't accept her the way she is

Children of Stardust

Part two of two

 

A few hours later...

 

The girl was running faster than she had ever run before, ignoring the blazing pain that had been forged in her lungs by the exercise.  Tears were streaming down her cheeks like meteorites streaking across the night sky.  Her once black eyes had now taken to the color white.  she had to get away from them, all of them.  Sapphire didn't look back, but she knew without a doubt that they were close behind.  Where could she hide?  She needed somewhere to hide!  The girl didn't care what it was, as long as it would shelter her from every last one of them.

 

She was brought back into reality when she tripped over a small rock and, with a yelp, crashed to the ground.  Upon impacting the ground, the girl cut her hand on a small, but sharp stone.  She winced as searing pain spread throughout her hand like wildfire.  But for some bizarre reason, the pain subsided as quickly as it came.  The teen, puzzled, turned over her hand to examine her palm.  "What the-"  The cut was still there, but to her utter disbelief, no blood was flowing from it.  Instead, a crystal clear liquid was coming out of the wound.  After a few seconds, the girl realized what the liquid was, "Water..."  This wasn't making any sense whatsoever.  How could it be water?

 

Sapphire didn't get a chance to think about it any longer, as she was brought out of her thoughts by the sound of feet moving towards her.  The girl spun around and gasped, her snow-white eyes dilating.  She had been still for too long, and now to her absolute horror, she was face to face with them.

 

They were what had to be hundreds of people, all wearing expensive looking suits and gas masks.  To most, it would have been an odd, if not creepy sight indeed; but to the girl, it was the face of all her fears.  She was petrified by those emotionless, unblinking eyes.  She abhorred those eyes so much.  All they ever did was stare at her, stare into her, as if they were trying to figure out what she was.

 

Every part of the youth screamed for her to run, but she found that she couldn't.  Terror had spread throughout her entire body, freezing every one of her bones in a solid, thick block of fear.  As the Gasmasks drew closer, her heart began to beat faster than the winds of a tempest, "This is it..."  Sapphire thought, close to hyperventilating, "...they've gotten me.  This is the end..."  The Gasmask closest to the girl began to slowly reach out for her.  Knowing that she was finished, the girl closed her eyes and waited for the hand to grab her.

 

But it never did.  "Wait...what?"  The other worldly girl slowly opened her eyes(which were slowly transitioning from white to grey).  She couldn't believe what she saw next.  There was nothing: all of the Gasmasks had just disappeared into thin air.  A strong feeling of relief began replacing her fear as the girl slowly rose to her feet.  She must've been the luckiest girl alive...

 

But the relief was short lived, as something genuinely weird began happening off in the distance.  Sapphire frowned as she watched purple streaks of light fall from the sky.  When one of the streaks hit the ground, it exploded, leaving a crater of dirt, fire and smoke around 10ft in diameter.  "What is that, a meteor shower?"  The girl asked herself.  No, that wasn't it; the color just wasn't right.  What could possibly be going on here?

 

While she was mesmerized by the sight before her, one streak of light came down close to her and exploded.  The shockwave from the blast nearly knocked her off her feet.  It was at this point the girl realized, quite alarmingly, that the streaks of light were getting closer.  As she realized this, her eye color quickly changed from grey to lava red.  Without pause, the girl began sprinting away from the beautiful, but potentially dangerous shower.  She knew now that if she wanted to survive, she had to find shelter, and fast.

 

Explosions soon began happening all around the adrenaline fueled teen as more and more purple streaks of light smashed into her surroundings.  No matter how fast she ran(and she was a fast runner), the explosions just kept becoming more and more frequent.  Panic shot through Sapphire like a Pulsar's beam as it dawned on her that she couldn't outrun the shower of light.  This was bad, really bad.  The girl desperately checked all around her, hoping to find anything that she could seek refuge in, but there wasn't anything.  The situation had just gone from bad to worse.  What should she do?  She had to think...

 

Yet another light streak collided with the ground near her, only this one was MUCH closer than the last one.  Before she could even brace herself, the girl was sent flying back twelve feet.  Upon crashing into the cold, hard ground, the girl had the air knocked out of her.  Her vision started to blur as she fought to stay conscious.  After about 15 seconds, her vision started to clear, and she could make out something rather big in the sky.  It wasn't until her vision cleared completely that the teen could see what it was, "No,  that is NOT possible..."  What Sapphire saw was something that shouldn't-couldn't be there.  It was a giant star, and it was about to collide with the Earth.  Suddenly, she knew what those purple streaks of light were.  They were much smaller stars-her stars- every last one of her dreams coming to a violent end.

 

The girl was about to die.  She knew this, but instead of being scared, she felt...nothing.  Her eyes didn't change color this time.  Instead, they just disappeared altogether, leaving nothing but white in their place.  Inside, the girl was now desolate.  She wasn't sad or happy about death, she was just empty.  People died all the time, and she wasn't any different.

 

Out of nowhere, the remarkable youth felt a hand on her shoulder.  At first, she thought it was another Gasmask, but as she turned around, she realized that it wasn't.

 

The hand belonged to a teenage boy who looked to be around the same age as the girl.  He  was every bit as peculiar as Sapphire was; with hair as green as leaves after the birth of Spring, and two beautifully enchanting eyes, one as gold as the sun and the other a sparkling silver.  He was every bit as wondrous as the girl was.

 

When the girl made eye contact with the boy, the boy did something nobody else had ever done before; he smiled at her.  It wasn't a hollow smile either, it was a gentle, warming smile that said, "It's good to see you."  In other words, a caring smile.

 

Slowly but surely, the white in the girls eyes flooded with color once more; although they wouldn't settle on one color, for the girl had a multi-verse of emotions shrieking beneath her skin.  The boy, still smile still plastered on his face, held out his hand.  He was offering to help the girl up.

 

Sapphire stared at his hand for a minute, stunned by how nice this boy was being to her.  This was a whole new universe for her.  Nobody had ever cared about her at all up until now!  Finally, the shocked youth snapped out of it, and grabbed the boy's hand.

 

The green haired boy helped her off the ground, and as he did so, something truly, impossibly remarkable happened.  Without warning, an incandescent aura surrounded the two.  The girl was completely hypnotized by the spectacle, while the boy, though he smiled at it, remained nonchalant.  It was as if he'd seen the marvelous display many times before.

 

Suddenly, the golden aura began to take the shape of something, but the teens couldn't tell what it was from the inside.  Once it seemed to have finished shaping itself, the aura, by itself, took off in the direction of the large, falling star, leaving behind the youths and a trail of fireflies.  Now the two could see the form the aura had taken.  It had taken on the shape of a bird; but not just any bird.  The girl gasped in shock and wonder as she realized that the aura was shaped like a Phoenix.

 

Even as it got closer and closer to the enormous star, the Phoenix didn't slow down a single bit.  It dawned on the girl that it intended on charging straight into the orb of light, heat and energy.  When it was only mere seconds away from vanishing into the star, the Phoenix let out a thundering, melodic roar.  And then the mythical bird disappeared into the sphere of opaque light.

 

The instant the Phoenix crashed into it, the star began to gradually slow down until it came to a complete halt.  For a few moments, it just sat there, suspended in space.  At first, the girl thought it was going to stay there forever, but then it started moving again.  This time it wasn't moving towards them, it was moving away from them.

 

The star wasn't the only thing going backward though.  All around the two teens, every one of the smaller stars that had already collided with the Earth were retreating back into the sky as well, the craters they made being erased in the process.  It was like somebody had hit rewind on the universe's remote control.  Millions of thoughts were racing through the girl's mind as she tried to figure out what was happening.

 

The mismatched eyed boy took notice of the worried expression of the girl's face, and placed his hand on her shoulder.  She turned to face him, and he gave her another warming smile that said, "Don't worry, everything's alright."  This managed to calm her down.  Together, the two stood and watched the scene before them unfold.

 

It wasn't that the star was moving away from them; time itself was going in reverse.  The universe was getting younger, and the younger it got, the smaller it got as well.  Younger and smaller it kept getting until it was nothing more than an infinitely dense, infinitely small speck.  It was at this point that time began to flow normally once more.  In the beginning, there was darkness, and then...

 

13.7 billion years later

 

Beep, beep, beep, beep!  The blanket of silence that enveloped the bedroom was suddenly torn to pieces by the sound of an alarm clock.  The resonating noise created by the device was more than sufficient to awaken the occupant of the bed next to it.  Before the alarm could finish its next set of four irritating beeps, a hand emerged from underneath the blanket of the bed and silenced it.  With a gentle sigh, the person of whom the hand belonged to removed the blanket, allowing the whole of reality to finally see the person with its own eyes.

 

The girl looked at the time on the clock: it read 12:01 am.  Slowly, she sat upright and gazed out her bedroom window.  The night sky above was filled with beautiful, dancing auroras, and the ground was covered in luscious grass.  Off in the distance, the sapphire haired girl teen could just see the pale white glow of a big city.

 

The girl looked around her room to see if anything had changed.  She immediately noticed something different about her mirror.  Getting to her feet, she walked over to the mirror to examine it closer.  Now there wasn't a single crack on the mirror, allowing the girl to finally see her own reflection.  She brought her hand up to her face, shocked.  So that was what she looked like.  She actually didn't look as bad as she thought she did.

 

Once again looking out the window, Sapphire slowly let a smile form on her face.  For the very first time in a long, long time, she spoke out loud, "Another day..."  She said, her iridescent eyes turning a brilliant shade of pink. 

 

The End.

 

Author's Note

I know this part of the story is way longer than the first part. I like to think of the first part as being a prologue. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this story. Tell me what you think!

Reviews

[Workvio]

A most tantalizingly intriguing read ... Somehow, I feel that the adventure, perhaps in speculating, should just be beginning, as in making the first two parts chapters in a longer piece ... You have created quite a magical fantasy world, so why not do something more with it, develop your story line and characters further to take your readers on, maybe, a series of adventures, rather than to simply tease them with only two? ... Well done ...

[DoormanDan]

I'm glad you liked this! This was meant to be just an experiment to see if my story writing skills are any good. I am writing a book however that will be similar to this story, and I have the first few chapters posted. :)

[Stephen]

I really did enjoyed this story. You had me interested from the very beginning and had me wanting to keep reading because I had no clue of where you were heading with this story. The plot was great in the beginning middle and end and just ended great. Thanks for sharing this story. It was a very interesting read.

[DoormanDan]

I'm really glad you liked the story! Thanks for taking the time to review it :)

[Valentine]

Being older, I am not into this type of a write...but your writing ability is fantastic. My niece would love this story. Keep it coming then submit it. Valentine

[DoormanDan]

Thanks for being honest in your review. The honesty is much appreciated :)

[Amber Lily]

That was beautiful. It not only speaks of what its like to live in depression, but it tells you what it's like to escape it. Sometimes it takes meeting someone new to save you from the universe you've trapped yourself in. I especially loved the end where time starts over and its a beautiful place.
A great story :)

[DoormanDan]

Thanks for reviewing :). I really enjoy writing stuff that can move people.

[Cool Girl]

Wow I thought part 1 was amazing, but this is just spectacular! You are fantastic:)

[DoormanDan]

I'm really glad you liked it. Your positive feedback seriously helps build up the self-confidence I've always lacked. I can't thank you enough for that :)

[Cool Girl]

Thank you! I've never really had much self confidence, but helping others to have it helps me to have it too:)

[DoormanDan]

It does help. :)

[Lizardo]

This is Awesome, again you are a great writer and this story proofs it and I like how you add the 13.7 billion years since the universe was created.
This A very nice story, I like it

[DoormanDan]

I cannot thank you enough for reviewing my writing. It really helps build my confidence :)

[Lizardo]

You are welcome :)