All your life, did you know /
you'd be picked like a rose.ᐣ
(Name) is full of contradictions. She is dreamy, yet decisive. Eccentric, yet charming. Ambitious, yet secretive. Confident, yet conflicted. Gentle, yet strong-willed. However, maybe the mo...
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‿̩͙‿ ༺ ♡ ༻ ‿̩͙‿
The rain beat down against the cobblestone path she was standing on. It slithered down her numbed cheeks like serpents and drenched her clothes in water, causing the soft material of her miko attire to fill with dark splotches and make her tremble intensely. Her hands were sickeningly cold, something she only noticed when she anxiously grasped the red fabric of her pants.
The pathway she'd been walking on for what felt like an eternity seemed to get longer with every passing minute, the stones beneath her growing larger by the second. Pale grass around her shook violently and muddy puddles formed beneath her frail feet. She could see nothing beyond the clouded haze, her eyes squinting as she forced herself to persist in walking.
I can't find Sophy.
Shivering, [Name] took another step. Her legs quivered beneath her painfully, struggling to carry the weight of the eight-year-old girl against the harsh, tottering rain. The thunderstorm was a thousand times worse than how she had been observing it from inside the safe walls of her family's shrine; she found it hard to concentrate on her racing thoughts when they were being interrupted by thunder.
The raging clouds were a whirl of faultless black beings, each in a disheveled pearly assemblage. They contorted their bodies to the rumble of the skies' wrath, changing shapes as the wind beat against their bodies. Lightning followed, and she had to cover her eyes from the sharp flash of silvery light. Even the piercing rain fell in methodical clockwork as if it was the monarch of the landscape, arriving at an unnoticed order.
The barely perceivable glow from the moon that shone down on her could not even be called proper illumination in the first place. Every once in a while, her eyes would dance up to gaze where the presumed guiding moonlight was supposed to be, but her heart did nothing but claw at her like some maddened beast when each time, all that she caught sight of was the black coat in the sky.
Where's Sophy?
[Name] tried to take deep breaths as her vision gradually became blurrier. Another lightning bolt struck, only meters from her and causing her to instinctively flinch, her hands jerking in dread as the bolt scorched away the grass beneath it. Her decreasing sanity took a nosedive, a yelp of fright leaving her lips.
Her clear eyes widened when she heard the muffled ringing of bells above the sound of the beating rain, the whipping of the wind, the flinging of lighting, and the thunder roaring. The bells of the cathedral. They sounded so distant. Was it 12 am already? Just how far was she from the shrine?
Tears welled up in her eyes, and her lips started quivering as an uncharacteristic sliver of panic settled itself into her doddering heart.
Little [Name] had seldom known of the feeling of fear. Little [Name] had slept through the night since she was three months old, with no worries of phantoms inhabiting her closet or monsters hiding beneath her bed. Little [Name], no matter how big or terrifying, had kissed every wild creature or insect she had come across on the forehead despite how many times her family told her not to. Little [Name] had never even thrown up (just like her mama)!
But little [Name] couldn't stand thunderstorms. Her heart rate startlingly increased to the point where she felt it bashing the bones of her rib cage without needing to put her hand on her chest. There was an eerie yet muted feeling inside of her, a dense and dreadful darkness that crawled among her veins and arteries as if she was deflating like a rubber balloon. You'd have thought that after being born here she'd be used to having such terrorizing storms, but you were wrong.
Manjushage Archipelago was a neighboring cluster of large isles from the Federation of Ochima, a thunderous yet whimsical supernatural land, home to some of the most renowned sorcerers and witches in the world and a sacred place for those who wished to learn about the arcane arts of witchcraft. Its people were acquainted with a haiku, one that conveyed an unspoken rule among everyone.
When you hear the storm Weave trouble within its arms Seek the shrine at once.
It was simple, painfully so. If someone looked up at the big mantle that was the sky and witnessed black clouds, they were to immediately leave everything they were doing and make a run for the Grand Shrine. They were not to leave until the land was completely safe and the sky dispersed back to its faded cobalt shade, cicadas lulling the air back into a pleasant, sweet ambiance with their songs. Easy, simple.
Little [Name] had broken the one rule her home harbored.
"Mama! M-mama!"
But her mama couldn't hear her. Looking around her, she started to sob out the names of the people she knew in hopes that someone would hear her. Her mom and dad, her older siblings, the maidens at the shrine, the monks of the cathedral, the townsfolk. Someone? Anyone? Someone was bound to hear her,right? Right?
She stumbled as she tripped on something, falling to the ground and a wail left her lips when she hit the solid surface of the rocks beneath her. My legs, she thinks, ow, my legs.
The swelling emotion that had spread on the back of her head ever since she heard that Sophy wasn't in the shrine suddenly exploded, an eruption of both confusion and distress sheathing her entire body, from the tips of her fingers to the soles of her feet. A nauseous sensation burst inside her chest, a wildfire setting her entire rib cage and probably her heart on fire.
The rain continued plummeting down her frame like bullets while the ruthless winds lashed violently and fiercely. Her sobs were loud and brash, and the plated tears that compared to pearls in appearance left frozen stripes across the round apples of her cheeks and down her chin.
Just as she heard a bunch of stomping feet going her way and the caring yet frightened outcry of her father, she mustered up enough strength to open her eyes and meet the object that she had tripped on.
There was a single geta laid forgotten on the ground. It was awfully small, a child's size.
"For the love of—there you are! What were you thinking running off by yourself like that?!" Her father wasn't able to suppress his surge of panic showing itself as he sighed in relief while kneeling beside his youngest child to carefully take her into his arms. Castor's concern skyrocketed once she didn't respond. "Hey, sweet pea, look at me, are you hurt?"
However, [Name]'s father was met instead with a vacant stare of shock in her eyes as the rain continued falling down her cheeks, so dazed that she couldn't even move. She lay immobile in his arms as if she were a porcelain doll that could be thrown to the ground and shattered everywhere.
A shiver swelled across his spine when he realized that she wasn't even looking at him, and as he followed her gaze, he ignored the other approaching voices of the research team that had gone out to look for his daughter and instead focused on the lone, bloodied sandal on the ground.
