The Beginning.
I assure you, it gets better later.
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The sky.
An overarching power. A barrier that keeps us tied to the burrows. It's coated in darker pastels, containing myriad purple hues that swirl and mix with the essences of black entities.
Deviants.
That's what we call them. They leech onto the sky. Thousands upon thousands of them, as far as the eye can see. Diurnal predators that hunt in the light. Varying from 7 metre balls of malice, to gargantuan monstrosities able to bend the laws of reality, the queens. Symbols of hopelessness and powerlessness.
Eat. Their only Goal. Devoid of emotions, sympathy, and feelings.
When daytime strikes. Anything and everything that moves on the surface is dead. Gone, no trace, no remains, just gone. There was once a time when we had a few dozen people living with us. Out of everyone in our burrow, that number has severely diminished. Month after month, the numbers dropped. from 38 to 37 to 36, now only 17 of us live in this space.
My dad told us that only the babies live around this area. That they're just "Small fish that swim in the air," but we know he's putting on a brave face.
Each morning, everyone can feel it, the sounds of death breathing down our necks. These 'babies' rupture through the sky above us in bursts of amplified lightning, shaking the very ground. Destruction follows them, then death follows suit, trees bend away as if to avoid their gaze. They're fiendish predators, Mininukes.
They feast on other vile, ugly, abysmal, and otherworldly ugly, ugly hellspawns, caught unlucky on the edge of dawn. Their fate becomes sealed, destined to die as a horde of deviants devourer them. Shattering the sound barrier while they contend for prey, fighting over which one claims the feast. They crash into each other, damaging the terrain while the ground trembles in adolescent fear, impulsively crying out seismic waves.
Something has been caught. The ceiling shakes, candles burn out. The handcrafted buckets made from scrap rattle, clinking. The noise strikes fear, sending a piercing shock to our chests.
"Quickly. Everyone grab onto something that makes sound." My father whispers in a loud, restrained panic.
I nervously jump up from the floor. My youngest sibling, just shy of the womb, looks at me, introducing a short moment of calmness into my heart, right as his eyes start to roll in. Unknowingly, I shoved a finger into his mouth to quiet him, patting his back.
Softly whispering into his ears, "It's gonna be alright, I got chu fam"
Not a single word is understood, but in the moment, he quiets down as I hold him knit tight in my arms and press his head close to my heart. It's warm. I smile at him, hiding my fear as we sit on an old, rugged mat woven through by dried branches.
My Grandfather used to do this to me on the very same mat. He was the light to guide us out of the darkness, a safe haven to reside in, but that darkness held him too.
Time passes as dawn is near, and our world stops shaking, if only momentarily. My mother's two elder sisters, Faye and Gazeal, come looking for us, greeting me with a sigh of relief that I'm okay, or rather, my little brother. Maybe they don't like me, or maybe it's because he's the cutest thing in the world.
"We have to check on Mom, she was by herself the whole night while we had our hands tied."
They look at me with a sense of urgency, so I try to sit up straight, my back sore from sleeping on the floor, trying to keep my brother comfortable. A small ache follows through from my lower spine, sending a small jolt as I lift my head off the woven mat, forcing me to jerk my head forward. Yet, I'm met with resistance, my hair, which seeped into the gaps of the floor mat, pulled, attempting to unweave itself, causing a sharp pain to emerge in my head.
"Owww," I yelped.
My brother gives me a playful look of amusement on his mischievous face. I return him a saddening look of betrayal, not enjoying the moment as much as he was.
My eldest auntie, Faye, buts in, her face held visible disdain, mixed in with a half-smirk, half-frown, "You really need to cut your hair, it's way too long, too... Unruly. Every girl in our family should be presentable," but her tone softens up as her eyes close, slender hand to her face as she enters the dream realm.
Entranced in her escape from reality, Faye continues to mutter to herself, "Who knows when you might stumble upon a fine~ young man. Maybe they'll fall in love with you. Just touch up your hair and maybe your clothes. Ooooh, wouldn't sapphire look nice on you? Any boy would be lucky to have you. Mmmh, in fact, there would be so many boys chasing you, maybe I would need to start screening through them."
I roll my eyes as I look at the Gazeal. She gives me a playful smirk, a non-verbal connection between us in agreement, almost like she was telling me that her sister was a little Delulu, asking me to forgive her for her earlier comment if it came off a bit wrong.
"She is enjoying this, Waaay too much," my words hiding a hint of embarrassment. To my expectations, Faye is completely deaf to my words, still trapped in her wild thoughts.
I look down at my brother, "You agree with me too, dont you?"
He agrees with me. I tell myself that, as his chubby hands reach for my lips, a devilish smile on his face as his mouth finds the tips of my hair.
Last time I cut my hair. I cried in front of all my family. A short blade tore through my hair around my shoulders as it pulled down on each strand. It hurt, and I hated it.
Woken up from this daze of reminiscence, and uhh, someone's weird fantasy. A calling for a family gathering echoes throughout the hallway, the source coming from my grandmother's room. It was my dad, calling us with his usual stoic nature.
We pass through the corridor, where puddles of dirt seep through the cracks of the metal coating and wooden support beams. The dried soil smell permeates the tunnel, visible distraught on my aunties' faces. The walls are lined up with clutter, salvage, and all kinds of things. From bangled street signs to handcrafted apparatuses. Everything held value, no matter how small or how useless an object seemed. Scarcity was the driving factor.
Candles aligned themselves against the walls, formed through tree resin from the surface. Some of them were found coated in dirt, no longer lit, others shone brightly, sparkling the room with a luminous soul, as if the light was a living thing being drawn towards us. Creating vibrance to the dull, silvery grey walls of the hull, blasting vivid pastels of vermillion hues around the corridor.
Lying at my Grandma's feet, Olivia, my older sister. She's only a year older than me, not even a full year at that. But every time, and I mean every single moment, she likes to coodle me, treat me like a baby still cooking in the womb or a toddler who needs help to go pee pee in the middle of the night.
"She's, uh. She's my sister," I mutter inwardly, passing my 3 year old brother to my Aunty in a slight hurry while maintaining a smidgeon of gentleness, as if I know what's about to come.
Her cold indifference of boredom, as if nothing had happened earlier, suddenly changes as I enter her field of vision. A slight smirk on her face forms into a smile. She launches herself at me, arms and legs open with a visible glee radiating off her face as she soars across the room.
Impact.
Her chest presses into my left cheek as I struggle to push them back away from my face. Wine red strands of hair, running along her bangs, aim for my mouth. Alabaster fabric brushes against my waist as her legs hold me tight in deadlock. I give my eldest brother, Caster, and my cousin a pleading look. Caster looks down and puts a palm to his face.
An audible sigh, running from his mouth
I feel the pressure from our weight leave my feet, as our centre of gravity becomes off balance. Olivia's delicate hands wrapped around my head in protection, her hands were incredibly soft.
Thud*
The flooring made contact with my head, or rather with Olivia's hands. Her face is close to mine as our hair intertwines. She gazed at me from on top, sitting up straight in a graceful manner, the hair from her ponytail leaves my face as it chases hers. My vision slowly aligns as it leads up to the view from underneath her. Her slender, pearly white arms emerge from the sleeves of her white shirt, still wrapped around me. My eyes are drawn to her face, skin as soft as satin, holding a warm, natural glow.
A sudden, unexplainable warm feeling neutralises the abrupt pain.
"Hey, Solyn~" She smirks at me.
A heavy cough.
The mood changes as everyone turns their head to the centre of the room. Though Olivia was still on top of me.
All eyes were on dad as he stood dead centre in the middle.
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Yoo author here, this is my first time ever writing, so uhh yeah,
Lowkey idk about you guys, but this chapter was lowkey mid.
It gets better from here. Trust.
Also idk if I should be breaking up descriptions, because they end up in large chunks of writing.
Hope you like this.