Flashback Some Stars Fade

[Atticus Leslie]

Winter 91st, 511 AV | Solar Winds Apartments |

He was young. Not young enough to be completely ignorant of the sicknesses inflicted upon his family, but young enough to believe in a happy ending.

He was happy. Always. His father always said he was like the stars in the early morning, he was always glad to see it. His mother said he was like the moon when nothing else shone, bright and completely engulfing. It was beautiful to him. Every second he spent with his mother and his father was perfectly sublime to him.

Their apartment wasn’t the easiest to live in. It was small, and they didn’t have enough money at the moment to move into a bigger room in the Solar Winds, but it was a beautiful room. The walls were adorned with beautiful canvases decorated with the most glorious depictions of the sky and the earth. At night when the lights shone through the singular window on the eastern walls, it illuminated the flowers and the skies just so the little boy felt like he was living in a dreamscape of his mother’s invention and it filled him with absolute joy to see the world she lived in. Nothing compared to that world.

He didn’t see his father often. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to visit his family or had run away, but as a dockworker the journey from the shore back to the city took a number of bells he couldn’t always give when working to support the child and his mother. When he did visit he was tired and gruff, eyes bagged with evidence of stress and hard work, but the child will never forget the laugh he had when he lifted his son into the air and kissed his cheek. The child would never forget the feeling of his father’s coarse whiskers on his soft skin. It felt like love. It felt welcoming.

The child loved his home. He had heard his parents’ whispers of shortcomings, sometimes his mother’s cries of pain due to her sickness, which she had never spoke about in detail but didn’t hide. She couldn’t burden such a young child with the knowledge of her illness in full. Every so often she was too weak to move out of bed, so her child would read her stories and sing her the songs she had sung him when he was sick. He wanted nothing but for her to be okay and his father to be happy, which they assured him they were.

“I’m just a little sick, I’ll be okay honey.” she would assure him.

“Nothing makes me happier than seeing you and your mother. That’s all I ever need,” he would promise.

It would have been empty to someone who knew better, but the child loved his parents. He wanted to believe them. So he did.

Sometimes he had his doubts, as anyone would. He had his doubts when his mother’s paintings became brighter and brighter, as if she were compensating. The colors were vibrant but the subjects were things like streets, light, strangers, things that she had seen countless times. She used to be able to see the beauty in everything and painted only the majesties she was afraid she would forget. But now she painted things she saw everyday. The child was afraid that she had been trying too hard to see what she used to be able to see so easily, or maybe she was afraid she would forget the most simple of things. The child feared the worst.

He had his doubts when his father wouldn’t return for days on end, sleeping at the docks to get the maximum amount of work he could in the mornings or even working through the night. He had begun wearing the same clothes for long periods of time out of necessity and sporting harsh, uneven beards and moustaches as a result of improper shaving, almost as if it were rushed. He began to become skinnier and skinnier. With his mother, this was regular, but with his father he knew exactly why. He began losing passion for his work and what he could get out of it, the child could tell. Sometimes when he arrived home he no longer picked up his son and spun him around the room, kissing him like he had used to. He staggered in, already exhausted from his work and nearly broken from the long hike to the city, seeing as he could not afford a ride up. He went straight to bed and left his child to gaze out of the window wordlessly into the empty hours of the night.

But they promised him it would be okay.

“We’ll be okay, Atticus. We love you more than anything,” They promised him.

He wanted to believe them.

So he did.

[Atticus Leslie]

It was late at night. His mother wasn’t bedridden that day and was walking around the small apartment draped in bedsheets that sprawled behind her majestically, and Atticus had watched in awe as she gazed out the window, steadily sketching the mediocre view with a weak and pale but steady arm and her thin, delicate wrist.

"What are you painting today?" Atticus would ask her sometimes, when she was having a good day. She always responded the same way whenever faced with the question.

"I’m painting what the stars and the sun show me." She would say.

She had always sounded so sure of herself when she answered, so enamored with her muses and her surroundings. It was hard to tell if she was speaking or if the gods spoke through her in her tone when she painted, whether or not her hand was guided by the wisest and greatest spirits to ever have existed. It was beautiful to hear her. Atticus couldn’t get enough.

She still spoke with the same clarity that she used to. She spoke with the same love of everything the light could touch. But it was weaker, her voice failing. Some days when she spoke it sounded like a secret, sacred and for her son’s ears only, like it was a privilege or a blessing higher than any gnosis to hear her talk. Other days it was like an echo. Like something she used to be.

But less.

That’s what she sounded like that day.

Atticus tried to inspire her when she couldn’t paint.

"Do you want to know more about the stars?" He would offer sometimes. His mother loved talking to him about it. It showed her that her passion was alive in her son. And Atticus loved sharing.

"Would you like me to tell you about the sky, mom?" Atticus offered his mother.

She set down her brush, devoid of color and unused for the day, and faced the window for a moment, clinging to the light that shone through. Atticus watched her pale shoulders rise and fall with the burden of another breath.

Wordlessly, she walked across the room, the simple bedsheets flowing behind her softly yet elegantly. Atticus looked at her as if Zintila herself graced Atticus with her presence. She bent over and retrieved Atticus’ journal that she had given him some years before, only filled just a portion of the way through, handed it to her son who was sitting on the bare mattress, and sat next to him. Atticus took it from her carefully before being wrapped in his mother’s arms and pulled to her chest.

"Tell me about the stars, Atticus." She whispered in her infinitely imperfect voice.

Atticus paused for a moment, listening to his mother’s heartbeat, feeling her warmth. Every pump of her organ felt like it pained her. Her entire body rattled slightly with every thump. And she was very warm. Almost like an ember after a fire, slowly going out.

He held back his tears and held his mother’s hand on his chest as he flipped open his book.

"I have reason to believe that the stars are distanced relative to each other as much as they are distanced to us." He began, "The peculiar bodies seem to be stationed unimaginably long distances apart…"

[Atticus Leslie]

After he had made sure his mother felt safe and healthy, Atticus tucked her fragile form delicately into the only bed in the apartment and sang her the same lullabies she used to sing to him. He was used to it now but sometimes it felt almost contradictory to help her, but it made his heart swell to see her happy.

He sat at her side for a while after he had finished the songs, gently stroking her hair and gazing upon her delicate body. It made him shudder to think of how she used to be. How strong she was. He could remember when she was stronger than his father. When she would pick him up and carry him like she carried Atticus. But she couldn’t carry Atticus anymore either.

Atticus stood up from her mother’s bed and kissed her cheek gently before moving to the wall across from her, sitting against it and getting ready to watch her sleep, just in case. If she had a nightmare and thrashed it wouldn’t be the first time Atticus had to hold her. He just wanted her to be safe.

He watched her for a while. Long enough he forgot what time it was. He watched the light dance off of the pictures hung so delicate on the walls, but they didn’t make him happy like they had used to that night. They were just as vibrant. Just as bright. But Atticus didn’t feel vibrant or bright. He stared at his mother’s world through grayer eyes than he had before. He watched light dance across the reflections of what his mother had used to be with unfeeling certainty.

Then the young boy fell to sleep.

He awoke quietly, to hushed tones. It felt like a dream. Morning light shone quietly on the barren walls and the uncovered floor. Two figures cast long shadows down the hallway behind them as they embraced in the hallway, weeping quietly.

For just a moment, Atticus saw what he had been wanting to see for so many years, praying to even remember. His father looked young, clean shaven. He looked happy and full. His chest was wide and his arms held a modest strength. He rested his cheek against Atticus’ mother’s gently and sighed happily.

And his mother. Oh, how gorgeous she was. Her hair, which had turned a light shade of grey, seemed vibrant and red. Her skin was glowing and the light that she constantly admired shone quietly in her wide eyes. She held Atticus’ father as tightly as his father held her. She was happy, and she was sure of herself.

When Atticus stood to run to them, he realized he was wrong. They looked nothing like what he had just seen. Compared to them, the apparitions were strangers. They looked like ghosts. They looked haunted and broken. They clung to each other not out of love but out of necessity for the love they once felt. One broken by the world, and one broken by the knowledge he could never help her.

Atticus stopped dead in his tracks, his bare feet squeaking against the floor. He looked in horror and remembered.

They turned, looking at Atticus with the same love that the apparitions would have. Love as vibrant as his mother’s paintings, love as pure and strong as his father’s efforts. And for just a moment, their echoes were their realities. He saw for just a moment the wonder in his mother’s eye when she looked at him, the health in his father’s bones when he embraced his son, and even with his failing strength picked up his baby boy and held him closer than he ever had. Atticus felt the pressure of his mother holding on, as tight as she could, to her family.

Mr. Leslie’s voice carried a strength Atticus could only hope his father could regain. ”We have to tell you something, son.” He said.

His parents held him tighter. His mother began to cry.

[Atticus Leslie]

1st of Spring, 512 AV | Solar Wind Apartments, Lhavit |

It had been a few bells now.

Atticus didn’t know what to do with himself. With the empty room he had inherited. With the promise of something he didn’t know he could live up to.

He had taken stock at least a hundred times. A simple shirt, pants, and undergarments. The usual. A new coat and pair of boots. Waterskin. A backpack with a few miscellaneous items within it. And 100 Kina to survive on to begin with.

It was dark now. Atticus wasted away the bells of the day staring at the empty walls that used to be adorned with his mother’s paintings, but she had taken them with her. They had taken everything they could carry.

They said they had to go. To make Atticus happy. He believed them. He had to. What else could he do? They wouldn’t lie to their son. Of course they wouldn’t.

Post-Winter wind blew through the window and chilled Atticus to the bone. He shook himself, crawled over to just under the precipice of the window, and stared at the unfailing sky. He clung his journal tightly to his chest, a reminder of how much his parents had cared.

They had said there was a job opportunity Atticus’ father couldn’t miss onboard a ship heading overseas as a worker. The journey would take a few seasons, a year maybe, but with the money that he would get paid with he could support his family without any more sleepless nights. He held Atticus close and cried melancholy tears as he promised they wouldn’t live here anymore, that they could help his mother become well. And yet they had agreed before Atticus had woken up that Mrs. Leslie needed to go with her husband.

She couldn’t say in front of her son, but his father’s promises were empty words designed for comfort. She was going to die. She could feel it in her bones. She could feel it in her breath. taste the inevitability on her tongue, and it plagued her. She had taken down her pictures from the walls and packed them, instructing her husband while Atticus was still asleep to sell them when he reached land for as much as he could, along with the rest of her possessions. She loved Atticus. She loved him more than anything else. But if her husband was leaving and wouldn’t be with her when she dies, she couldn’t leave this world happily. She couldn’t be able to live happily knowing Atticus would come home one day from the market and find her expressionless corpse wrapped in bedsheets, torn by pain and thrown atop her body in anguish. She cared too much.

They had agreed Atticus was old enough to take care of himself for a small while. And with bittersweet farewells, left Atticus in the apartment, which now belonged to him.

The sky seemed to darken, patches of cloud covered the sky, but Atticus could still see the stars. It was beautiful. It was comfort. Another harsh wind blew through the window, and Atticus got up to close it. He sat back down and stared again upon his sky.

They said he was old enough.

The ground began to hum slightly beneath him.

Atticus disagreed.

The clouds had intensified, glowing all colors of an unnatural spectrum. But Atticus could still see the stars.

He held his journal tighter to him, begging for them to return. He knew they wouldn’t.

He buried his face in his work, too distraught to leak tears.

The humming intensified an exponential amount. It hurt Atticus’ ears to be around. It felt like the world was breaking around him and all he could do is wish his parents were here to hold him, to protect him. But he was alone now.

Above him the window shattered from a huge burst, spitting shards of glass across the room. The world outside shrieked, almost as if it were in extraordinary pain. Atticus looked up at the swirling mass of unnatural skies, lightning every color of everything he feared struck the city he loved mercilessly. The ground shook and the world quaked, crying in anguish with Atticus. Rains as sweet as razors bled from the sky.

The sky that wept for Atticus.

The new orphan looked up, crying and screaming for hope. He needed hope. And slowly but surely, and for just a moment, the sky opened.

And Atticus could see the unfailing stars above.

His tears stopped pouring. His grip tightened on his journal, not out of fear but out of determination. The stars remained. The everlasting stars.

So shall he.

And so the little boy - stripped of protection, stripped of love, stripped of what he held dear - made himself a shield of something new. On him grew callouses that would protect against the strongest storms. The sky, he realized, was apathetic. Nearly unchanging. Gorgeous in its own infinity. When he looked at it he saw something beyond this world, beyond its troubles, beyond his own troubles. There was no tragedy. There was nothing but a beautiful eternity existing in the forevers lurking behind this world. He couldn’t join them, but he could reflect them. He would live to see their beauty again. And he would for his entire life. And afterwards, they remain. They will always remain.

There was no always for Atticus. Staring at the veritable hellscape that was his city alone, clutching his knees to his chest and feeling his heartbeat throughout his shivering body, he realized this was true. But there would be a tomorrow.

He intended to see it.

[Atticus Leslie]

Tomorrow did come. It came slowly and painfully, after a fearfully dangerous and rigorous night that seemed to last an eternity for the child huddled against a wall beneath his small, singular window in a room occupied only by himself, ghosts, and shards of broken glass.

The winds had calmed. The noise that had threatened to engulf the child’s world and destroy all that remained was miniscule now. It was eerily quiet. Occasional lightning strikes still flashed through the multicolored clouds but the thunder had passed for miles and had become a distant roar. Atticus stared at the sky, covered like a blanket with clouds, and watched Syna’s bright shadow shine slightly through the rough. He knew it was morning. It wasn’t safe yet, but he had survived. He had watched carefully.

He stood, and poked his head out of the window, hair whipping in the quiet wind, observing the damage.

Streets had broken. Some buildings were missing walls or were horribly discolored. The trees were bent over and he could swear it looked like someone was pulling them down towards the earth. For the first time in his life, Atticus saw no one on the streets. No bustle. No celebration. Not even the okomo patrolled the roads today.

The air felt crisp and stung his nose slightly when he inhaled. It smelled of something he couldn’t accurately place without prior reference. It smelled unnatural, it smelled like what he had witnessed the night past. He could only describe it as horrible, malicious magic.

His eyes watered as he looked over his city. He couldn’t tell if he wept for his parents, for himself, for the destruction, for his loss, for others’ losses, or simply that the air stung his eyes in the same way it stung his nose.

Once again, he pointed his nose towards the sky. Somewhere past all the trouble above, past all the fire and hurt, there were still the stars. Eternal and everlasting.

With that thought in mind, Atticus smiled.

[Konrad Venger]

Nice job! Your work has pleased The Sloth! Atticus XP: Observation - 2 Philosophy - 1 Lore: Lucky Enough to have a Loving Family Slow Sickness: Rotting Away and Love and Beauty My Parents: Lying to Love and To Protect their Son Philosophy: The Apathetic, Eternal, Untouchable Stars Click Me! : Wow. This was... something else. From the very first paragraph I knew this would be a heartbreaker. You packed so much emotion into this, and yet it didn't feel forced or maudlin. Granted, you played on a few heartstrings here, I could tell, but all of it sounded genuine, if that makes sense. Believable. Painfully, brutally, unabashedly real. The progression of the story was nice, too, no rushing, and the characterizations were spot on at every turn. As was Atticus' solace from his pain in the everlasting sky. It's always a joy to see the very roots of a character; how such massive parts of their personality were forged by such small moments. Brilliant job, mate. Keep it up. Oh, and please make sure you go back and edit your post in the Request Thread to reflect the fact this one is now done and dusted. PM me with any questions and later 'tater!