starshinesiren
babe, there’s something tragic about you.
The night was starving.
The thick, London air smoked out the stars and suffocated the sweet, cool, wind of the countryside. There was a certain hunger, a desperation that lingered in the flickering streetlamps, in the yowl of street cats.
It manifested particularly in a ghostly, stick of a child. Trembling fingers clutched a dress of dark rags, shoes (though they hardly deserved their title with the amount of holes they bore) trudged along the cobblestone alleys.
Viola was exhausted. In her twelve years of life, she had starved before. She’d only recently become accustomed to it, but it was a familiar feeling. What was entirely unfamiliar was this sense of aimlessness. This ceaseless walking, the dragging of lead feet towards something you didn’t know. She’d lived her whole life with a plan, from what she’d be when she grew up to what she’d play at the piano that night for Father.
Like all children, she hadn’t accounted death into the equation.
She hadn’t known it before, but she did now. It had not knocked at the door. It had slipped underneath it, crept under Mother and Father’s bed and slowly drained the smile out of them every night as they slept. Now there was nothing left.
To her, death had another name.
Carlysle.
They had sucked the will out of her family. She would understand better when she was older, but one thing was for certain- her crippling loneliness, her lack of a home, her despair, it was their fault.
And she would do anything, anything, to make them pay for it.
Her legs, overburdened with exhaustion, buckled under her, throwing her tiny body to the filthy street. A sob escaped her lips as she moved herself to sit against the wall of the alley, tenderly rubbing her sore and now scratched knees.
A few months ago, she had been attending balls dressed in the finest gowns, picked out by her mother. Her father would dance with her on the floor, letting her stand on his shoes. Laughter and warmth filled their house, success had given them not a care in the world.
Now she had nothing.
The thick, London air smoked out the stars and suffocated the sweet, cool, wind of the countryside. There was a certain hunger, a desperation that lingered in the flickering streetlamps, in the yowl of street cats.
It manifested particularly in a ghostly, stick of a child. Trembling fingers clutched a dress of dark rags, shoes (though they hardly deserved their title with the amount of holes they bore) trudged along the cobblestone alleys.
Viola was exhausted. In her twelve years of life, she had starved before. She’d only recently become accustomed to it, but it was a familiar feeling. What was entirely unfamiliar was this sense of aimlessness. This ceaseless walking, the dragging of lead feet towards something you didn’t know. She’d lived her whole life with a plan, from what she’d be when she grew up to what she’d play at the piano that night for Father.
Like all children, she hadn’t accounted death into the equation.
She hadn’t known it before, but she did now. It had not knocked at the door. It had slipped underneath it, crept under Mother and Father’s bed and slowly drained the smile out of them every night as they slept. Now there was nothing left.
To her, death had another name.
Carlysle.
They had sucked the will out of her family. She would understand better when she was older, but one thing was for certain- her crippling loneliness, her lack of a home, her despair, it was their fault.
And she would do anything, anything, to make them pay for it.
Her legs, overburdened with exhaustion, buckled under her, throwing her tiny body to the filthy street. A sob escaped her lips as she moved herself to sit against the wall of the alley, tenderly rubbing her sore and now scratched knees.
A few months ago, she had been attending balls dressed in the finest gowns, picked out by her mother. Her father would dance with her on the floor, letting her stand on his shoes. Laughter and warmth filled their house, success had given them not a care in the world.
Now she had nothing.