Chapter One
Stardust
It’s not slavery if it’s accepted. But is it slavery if the bound one is blinded to their world?
The task of waking up from the night to darken the eyes in the day is questionable. To drink a sweet thick liquid that comes from a bowl in the middle of the room shouldn’t feel part of the norm but it is. Even outdoors their eyes must remain covered, but they are not stepping blindly into the fields.
The people of Celestara are guided by whispers from the flowers who await patiently for their time to claim their bodies. The ears of corn tell them not to go too far from their cabins as dusk beings to creep over the horizon and the wheat fields shakes them back into formation if ever a human steps out of the picking line.
None of this makes sense, Vos ponders and grips the thick piece of white fabric marked with two round black blotches for eyes. He looks over at his parents and the rest of the villagers in his cabin gracefully stir out of their slumbers and quickly retrieve their fabrics. His mother assists her husband with his, careful not to tie the knot too tight, but not loose enough that it may slip if he were to move his head at a wrong angle. She squeezes his shoulders and pats his back before turning around for help with hers.
“Vos. Tie me up.”
Vos turns his gaze to a younger girl extending her blindfold towards him. Behind her little dust particles shimmer like millions of miniature fireflies of multiple colors swirling around in a vortex. He slowly takes the piece of cloth, fixated on the strange dazzling show.
“What’s that?”
The young girl glances over her should and immediately as if swept by a gust of wind the shimmering dust particles vanish. She turns back to her friend with a raised eyebrow.
“It was nothing. Sorry.”
The young lady nods and sits down on the bed between his raised and lowered leg with her back turned to Vos. He’s not gentle tying on her blindfold.
“Why didn’t you sleep with me yesterday?” She questions.
“My parents are in here.”
“They and everyone else don’t seem to mind.”
Vos sighs, “Minerva, please. Not now.”
She snatches his blindfold from his hands. “It’s always not now.” Minerva scowls and moves quickly to cover his eyes. The corners of her lips turn downward and she pushes herself off the bed.
His mother steps up and places her hand on the crown of her sons head.
“I sense something is bothering you.” She says in her harmonious voice like a low hum soothing to the ears. She tucks her hand under Vos’s chin and he melts in her touch.
“We wake up just to go back to sleep.” He says. “The day the gods came here, nothing has been the same. We can’t walk freely like how we used to. I can’t even look up at the sky anymore. No moon, stars, or the sun. Just…darkness.”
His mother lowers her head and draws his close to her chest. She can’t oppose to his statement when it’s true. Life on Celestara has changed within the last two decades of their arrival from the old world. However, living in a peaceful state of darkness is far better than seeing torture at all sides and experiencing it for one’s self. Von narrowly escaped being used like a machine till death in their original land. She wonders why he longs to see after the glimpse of the former world. Possibly due to him still young and wondrous. She sees a pile of books poking out from under his bed and makes a mental note to get rid of them before he’s influenced even further.
“Are the gods real?”
Mrs. Vos runs her fingers through the spaces between her son’s braids. “Of course. How else are we able to sustain life this far, but with any God to have that amount of power they must conceal themselves. They are protecting us and sometimes it’s better to stay in the unknown.”
The two embrace for a moment until the sound of trickling water against stone gets louder. An indication that the basin is filling with morning elixir. A thick yellow liquid that fills a stone basin from the bottom on up.
Vos feels his mother’s hand pat his back. “Come, it’s time to drink.”
She joins other villagers around the basin and stands with her hands in the edge like everyone else. Vos stands but doesn’t move. Every morning over eight hundred people filling forty homes on the island drink the elixir before heading out into the fields. If not the doors to their cabins won’t open since the locks are on the outside. But what if someone doesn’t drink the elixir?
I don’t want to go mad. Vos chews on the side of his mouth. According to the elders, it’s instant death from insanity, however when has that ever happened to anyone?
“Vos?” His mother calls out to him. She doesn’t feel his presence beside her at the basin.
He takes one step towards the others, then stops feeling a heaviness in the space around him. His ears raise at the sudden drop in temperature and inhales a light bitter-esque sweet scent he never breathed in before.
“Stay in here with me.” A whisper pleads in his right ear. Vos spins around and slowly lifts his scarf centimeters enough to see the dirt ground, shimmering the same floating dust he saw behind Minerva. He wasn’t mistaken. He raises the cloth above only one eye. The glitter turns and twirls forming a light vortex before dispersing all around him like snowflakes.
“Stay here with me.” The gentle female voice whispers again. Vons blindfold lifts by an unknown invisible force and drops at his feet. Too hypnotically focused on the glitter, he watches as every shinning particle starts to come together in a pile, fusing like sand and for a split second, a face with massive hallow eyes stares back at him.
The mouth moves “Stay with me.”
Vos yelps, takes a step back and stumbles over his own failed equilibrium.
Heart slamming against his chest, the young man calls out to his mother and turns to the basin, but everyone is gone and the door is shut. He tries the door knob and it doesn’t turn.
“Lay with me.” The glitter moves closer to him, fuses together into the curvaceous body of a female, then break apart into a million shards.
“W-who’s there?”
The glitter cloud drops to his level and floats over him. Vos, in total shock and awe can’t move. Too petrified by phenomenon of beauty and unfamiliarity. He wanted to see the stars and clusters of them were on top of his body, the weight of a person sitting on his pelvis but all that was there was glitter. The sprinkles pile on his bare chest molding into a hand that gently nudges him to lay flat on his back and again the round face with hallow eyes reappears inches in front of his.
“I want you.” The ghost whispers.
His throat finally loosens and with a deep breath, Vos screams at the top of his lungs.
A face not human is inches before his and a handmade of glitter shoves him down by the chest. He pushes back and like sand, his hand is casted onto the sparkling dust over something round. Vos pushes harder, feeling his heart slam against his chest in terror. The invisible being slams him down as he tries to raise up. Whatever is attacking him is stronger, pulling his woven drape down to expose all of his body.
“Someone help me!”
A shriek sounds off sending hot needles deep into Vons’s ear and splitting the drum inside. He yells trying to endure the pain and fight off the invisible monster on top of him, but the more he tussles, the more exhausted he becomes.
The face moves over his shoulder, opens its mouth and bites down. A sharp frying pain consumes his right shoulder. The glitter lays flat on top of him. Vos closes his eyes, screams in agony as the pain travels through every vein in his circulatory system.
He opens them and suddenly freezes.
Gawking back at him are two massive ovals of total darkness on a round brown face, large lips, and sandwiched in between, a small nose. An alien wearing a blue and gold dress sits on his lap and is pushing him down.
Vos gasp. Inhales and gasps again. The alien slowly rises off him and creeps backwards with caution as he continues to try to exhale. It then springs into the air, breaks through a hole in the roof and covers it up with vines from the outside.
With no one close enough to hear his screams of plea and horror, Vos closes his searing eyes and drags his hands around the dirt ground in search of his blindfold. Every vein around his eyes is on fire, clawing them out would be a relief. The back of his throat tastes of blood from screaming and bells and collided whispers sound off in his ears. The only thing that can heal him is something cold and liquid. The elixir in the basin.
The young man dashes to the stone bowl and dumps his cupped hands into what remained at the bottom. The drink was warm and gooey as if what remained was backwash from the others drinking with their entire heads in the bowl. But it had to do.
Vos gulps the slimy substance and smears the rest over his sizzling eyes, but his throat was still raw, and his chest is tight. The air in the cabin is heavy.
I have to get out of here.
He pushes the front door open despite hearing whispers of him not to and opens his eyes against the glare for the first time in 15 years.