Manor Saffron: Celestial Downfall, #4

1

Descended

The sky darkened and a red hue overtook the horizon, as it always did when demons were near. The heavens cried tears of blood when such evil descended upon the rare, innocent souls that drifted on angelic winds.

Altera imagined there should have been screams or cries, but the aftermath came upon her in its crushing silence. Only her heart thundered in her ears, her blood rushing with fear that this time, the demons would not be satisfied with what they’d found in the clouds. There’d been a time when they’d hungered for more. She’d tried so hard to block out the memories. But the sour fear that tinged on her tongue promised that all her terror could be relived. She clutched at her husband’s hand as hard as she could and reminded herself that they were both here, alive, and they’d make it through this.

A golden orb dotted the sky, proof that this wasn’t an event of her imagination. Her grip impossibly tightened on her husband who stood rigid as they stared together at the descending piece of heaven. Uruk hadn’t known true terror. He’d only seen the result of it in her eyes, a void of loss that would always be a part of her soul.

But this child that drifted through the sky had survived what her sisters had not. Its mystical warmth still radiated, somehow having surpassed so many demons whispering across the horizon.

Altera didn’t dare look beyond the orb. Bat-like wings still cast shadows over ruby clouds and her tongue locked to the roof of her mouth as a scream dried up in her throat.

They’re leaving, Uruk said, his voice a broken sound across the still sea of silence between them.

She caught her breath enough to speak. She’s still alive, Altera whispered, knowing that this would be a daughter of the sky, a Windborn child of beauty and grace that would be an undeserved blessing for them all, should the babe survive their cruel world.

Her husband’s grip on her tightened. She won’t be for long.

She couldn’t imagine going through this again. She’d stood here so many times and done nothing when a piece of the gods fell, needing only her hands to guide that child to safety. The golden orb, now descending through a ruby sky, was just about to meet the jagged rocks below.

Altera scanned the desolate land of sharp obsidian that was the result of their sin. Demons thrived, their mark left behind as the glistening shards of evil that punctured the ground and speared fingers into the air. It was hopeless to imagine that there was anything she could do for the piece of heaven that was about to meet this dark embrace. And thus the child would be left to starve, dying alone in a desolate land with no one to hold her and keep her safe.

Still, Altera looked up to the orb again, her heart racing for this life that was a speck of hope in a world gone merciless and cruel.

She’s still alive, she said again, louder this time.

Her husband gripped her wrist so hard that her bones grated painfully together. You will not go near it, he commanded.

She swirled to face him, his eyes hard and dead, but she knew why. They’d lost their own child, added her tiny corpse to this littered graveyard that should have only belonged to remnants of the sky.

Our lost star, she breathed, the word a replacement for her daughter’s name that she couldn’t ever dare utter again. Her world blurred as the stinging tears came back to stream down her face. It’s our fault.

She’d known it from the moment her daughter had taken her last breath. The illness had been so sudden, so unusual. The Divine were punishing them for watching so many children survive the creatures in the sky, only to die alone in the cold embrace of the jagged forest. They’d done nothing. They’d allowed their fear and an ancient stigma to overrule their hearts.

She’d never ignore her heart again.

No, he snapped when she saw her flash of determination, and shook her.

With her wrist feeling as if it were about to snap, she clawed at his brutish strength. Yes! she screamed in his face. We’ve let them die. We’ve stood here and watched every single time. No more! She tore her nails through his fingers until he finally let her go, his features twisting from their typical dead-statue stare that had been his only retreat from the pain. He blinked at her, surprise fresh on his face, bringing a glimmer of color to his cheeks. Altera, he said, her name a hushed plea.

But she was already gone. The forest splintered under her feet, shredding into the protective leathers at her heels as she ran towards the golden orb that was just about to touch down. Its descent was too fast, threatening to crush the Windborn child cocooned in its sphere in a horrific moment of impact.

She held out her hands, jumping even as the forest retaliated against her spring, sending stabs of pain up her legs, but it was enough to catch the orb before it fell.

She dove, taking the brunt of the force against her back and shielding the orb as best she could. She gasped as the air knocked from her lungs, a sharp pain sending a jolt through her shoulder as something tore through it.

Altera! Her husband’s voice, a panicked scream.

But she was smiling, because in her hands, a rainbow-hued shell encased the most beautiful child she’d ever seen.

A girl with vibrant, green eyes.

There, dear, Altera wheezed. I’ve got you, my fallen star.

In spite of Uruk’s grumbles and growls, the daughter of the heavens soon became their own. Altera didn’t have to force her husband to understand. She watched as the child broke the thin barrier to his heart just as quickly as her tiny fist had broken through the mystical shell from which she’d been born and she’d sucked in a miraculous breath. Besides the fantastic moment of her birth, she was like any other child, learning to walk until she danced in the small cottage and brought joy and light into their lives once again.

Even Uruk had a heart that could fill to the brim, and Altera knew that even though he’d thought the dam closed, somewhere between a secreted smile or laugh, he’d filled his heart with love for their fallen star.

Altera held her daughter close, a girl of the skies she’d taken in as her own and named Valeria, after her mother’s line.

But now all smiles were gone, all laughter silenced. Valeria had succumbed to the sickness that inevitably came for children of the sky. She’d barely hit her sixth cycle of seasons when the bright green of her eyes began to fade into a sickly silver, and her skin went pale and dark.

What do we do? Uruk asked, his tone breaking with fresh love and pain on the desperate question. He’d known that Valeria would die, but he hadn’t wanted to be right. Even if the Windborn children were supposed to die young, he’d hoped for a miracle.

Their little girl shivered with a deep, unnatural cold from within, her lips blue and her once vivid green eyes turning dull. Altera rubbed her daughter’s arms, hoping to banish the icy shadow that bit under her fingernails. She hunched over the child, and not just because her stomach wound into knots with dread. That night she’d snatched Valeria from the skies she’d suffered a grave injury. Her shoulder still stung with the unforgiving blade of a Dark shard that had sunk deep into her muscles, connecting with bone and fusing itself to her body.

Its stabbing cold was a small echo of what she knew her daughter now felt. No matter how hard she rubbed, Valeria’s skin wouldn’t warm. Her small child looked up to Altera with her thin, midnight brows creased in pain. Why, Mama? she asked. It was a question of a child, no subject or expectation for details. Her little fist clenched. I am I so cold?

Altera’s heart clenched and she squeezed her daughter impossibly closer to her bosom.

Uruk’s bushy brows scrunched together and he jerked to his feet. He made his way purposefully to the dusty hearth, beginning to fill it with logs and twigs he’d painstakingly salvaged from the obsidian land. His hands blistered with red and dots of black of the Dark, the malice that had spread from the demons’ world into their own. Even though the flame couldn’t warm his adopted child, Altera didn’t say a word as he tried.

Altera urged her daughter closer to the flames when Uruk had stoked them to life. But Valeria screeched, her pain a living thing inside her that begged for the warmth of the heavens, not the blaze of a human world that only knew how to turn good wood into ash.

She’d clutched her daughter close, but the little girl was as light as a feather. She slithered out of her mother’s grasp and bolted for the door, Altera crying out for her to come back.

2

Across the Obsidian Sea

Valeria ran. She was old enough to know that she was dying, but couldn’t understand how or why. She wasn’t afraid. She’d felt the emptiness as long as she could remember. The fact that it had bubbled to the surface seemed inevitable. It had been a companion that weighed her soul until she couldn’t hide it anymore. The twinge of starvation had grown into a clawing need. Her body screamed for warmth and nourishment. No matter how many skinned rabbits she ate, or how close to Father’s fires she’d huddled, it’d only made it worse to be denied what her body truly craved.

She couldn’t stand the way Mother and Father had looked at her. She’d searched their eyes for hope, and had only found pain, sorrow, and fear.

She was the source of that sorrow, she realized. She knew she wouldn’t get better, not clutching to Mama in the cottage, so there was only one thing she could do.

She hadn’t bolted out the door to escape them. She’d felt what she needed, but hadn’t been brave enough to disobey her mother’s orders to never leave the small patches of green around their home. But now she had no choice. Her death threatened like an icy dagger at her neck and she had to stop it, if only to banish the grief in her parents’ eyes. She didn’t fear leaving her withering body behind, that thought was almost a relief to escape the pain, but she couldn’t imagine breaking her mother’s heart and never seeing her or Father again. She knew, somehow, she wasn’t like them. When they died, they wouldn’t go to the same place as her. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye, not when it meant forever.

And so she had to face her body’s pressing need and run, even though she knew her parents wouldn’t understand. What she craved was foreign and mystical… and that need called to her. What she needed was somewhere close and a place only she could get to, if she could reach it in time.

She couldn’t describe what it was that called to her that promised to fill the clawing, empty void in her soul, but it was a voice that sang without words. It drifted in-between a realm of the physical, and something beyond she’d only known in her dreams. There was a place that was free of the obsidian and ash, and held life itself, if only she were brave enough to go out and find it.

So Valeria ran, her feet gliding over the Dark shards that infested the lands that nicked against her skin. Each cut burned as if she’d dipped her toes into shards of ice. It was a demonic power that speared through the ground, something her mother had warned her not to go near. But she had to brave the black sea. If she wanted to banish the sadness in her mother’s eyes, avoid the splitting of her father’s heart, she had to disobey their plea and run into the night like a whisper on the breeze.

Her feet burned and pain slithered up her legs like steaming oil. She bit her tongue to keep in her cry as she slowed to a wobbly stagger towards the eerie voice that sang louder every step she took.

The Dark shards littered the ground until she couldn’t even see the festered soil anymore and the ache in her feet was the only echo of their plague on the world. The pain was worse now that she’d suffered the unforgiving, demonic malice her mother had warned her of, but she was close to the promise of reprieve.

A fog drifted around her ankles and a sheen of rainbow hues obscured the source that called to her. The world broke in a vertical wall, hiding something that was meant to be secret and safe.

She reached out and grazed the thick film that hung in the air. A moment’s resistance, and then her nails shred through the rainbow-black mist. Sucking in a deep breath, she plunged through to the other side.

A world of Light and warmth sprang to life before her eyes. A sea of flowers made her vision explode with vivid purples and reds that contrasted so fiercely with the black she’d grown so accustomed to in a world of onyx shards. But a few blinks told her this place was real, that color and delight could exist when she’d known only dreary shadow.

Her gaze locked on the magnificent tree in the middle of the grove that burst with pink petals. It soared into the sky and she couldn’t fathom how she’d never seen it before. Its flakey bark unfurled from its sides and a golden liquid seeped down the long length of its limbs, streaming into the fresh browns of the soil that was nothing like the dead land that normally surrounded her home. Each droplet of sap brought forth a new flower from the ground, a burst of petals and a center of yellow whiskers that filled her senses with pungent, sweet aromas of its pollen.

She shuffled through the flowers, no longer feeling the bite of bone-deep cold so fiercely. Silken blossoms grazed against her ankles, banishing the burn and sending the ground sizzling with the liquid Dark that seeped from her wounds as if this place extracted the poison to cleanse her soul.

She smiled, realizing this place was healing her, accepting her into its fold.

The tree, it seemed alive and bowed its limps towards her in greeting.

Drink, it said, not with words but with sweeping emotion that said that she must survive. Come, child, and drink from my nectar.

She made her way to the tree, cupping her hands beneath a shred of bark to catch the glistening gold that drizzled down its sides. She admired the liquid, the way it glittered and seeped a tingling warmth into her skin, before she brought it to her lips and drank her fill.

Valeria survived that night, and would thrive for many nights to come. She curled into a ball at the tree’s roots until she tangled with the vines and blossoms as if she’d become one of them.

She wasn’t sure how long she stayed there. It could have been a single night, or a hundred. But one day she woke feeling refreshed and warm, the warmest she’d ever been. It was a relief that sank deep into her bones and made her skin glow as if she’d become the nectar of life itself that now coursed through her veins.

The only thing that could have pulled her from that place of magic and safety was the knowledge that Mother and Father worried for her. She’d run from the cottage without any explanation, and now she wasn’t even sure how much time had passed while she’d slept in the tree’s comforting roots.

She pulled away the layer of saffron petals that kissed her cheeks, the long stems of their nectar leaving a golden, glowing powder on her skin.

Before she left, she gathered the stems and peeled away a layer of the bark, a gift for her mother. The grove twisted at her ripping and tearing, but she hushed it, assuring it that there was another that needed its Light and love.

The mother tree didn’t approve, but proudly said that it would make a fine gift and the human mother would enjoy its boon. Beneath the pride was a warning: this place was not meant for their kind.

It was difficult to face the fact that she was not the same as her mother. She’d always known it, but had ignored the glaring clarity that her mother wasn’t her mother in flesh. They were different, and now she painfully knew that she wasn’t human without a doubt.

She’d never bring her human mother here, as much as she wanted to. She knew that this place didn’t belong to anyone else. She’d been allowed into the sanctum, but it would be blasphemy to bring another soul.

And so she gathered her treasures and stepped out into the cold, cruel world again.