❛ the ground. that's the dream. ❜
On the list 𝘓𝘺𝘳𝘢 𝘑𝘶𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳'𝘴 𝘛𝘰𝘱 𝘛𝘦𝘯 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘔𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘖𝘧 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦, getting arrested is definitely up there. But, hey! At least there's a silver lining ━━ getting shoved into a drops...
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THERE ARE TIMES when Lyra thinks her life might be one infinite death march.
That tends to happen when your given a life sentence at fifteen. When it's nothing but you and the walls and the voices, despair makes itself known pretty quickly. Darkness offers itself in gratuitous amounts, its hands and fingers tangible and real as they coil around your throat, crushing the spirit out of you until your skin is stained violent violet with purple misery. Despair stalking you from every corner. Dimensions of grief you never thought were possible. Catastrophe in your bones, damnation in your very blood.
She'd envisioned her death countless times. While she had been a luminous supernova, with her soaring into the cosmos, even the stars die. Burning out slowly, agonisingly. Falling. And she'd fallen. Ripped from her mother, unable to take her hand, watched her plunge, twist, plummet into the endless universe. Then she'd been accused of her murder and sentenced to death. Squandered to nothing but a living corpse, a bleeding skeleton, a shapeless silhouette. Counting down her days. Waiting for the day she'd be left to the mercies of obsidian galaxies, the day the stars would open their jaws and swallow her whole.
But then came her shooting star: the ground.
At first, she didn't like it. She wanted nothing more to return to her home, to the stars - what use is a star-girl on the ground?
And yet somehow, against all odds, Earth has become the star-girls sweet salvation. A soft, lilac haven. Bringing hope back to a girl that always bled chaos. A symbol of reconciliation with herself. An eternity of happiness just within grasp, swelling within the little blue planets lifeblood.
Like a dream, lost in the subconscious of her fast-asleep mind.
But of course, dreams don't last forever.
You wake up.
And oh, does Lyra wake up. A hurricane howls inside of her head as she bursts to life, jerking upwards, nausea growling in the depths of her stomach. For a moment she cannot seem to gather her senses, the light blinding in her eyes, her head hurts, and ━━
"Welcome back to the land of the living."
Softening the throbbing pain in her head is a familiar voice that's soft as summer skies, and with half-hearted curiosity, Lyra turns to see Wells Jaha has found her. His presence feels like liquid sunlight. She's reminded of their first day on Earth when they were convinced the world was ending because they hadn't been able to contact the Ark ━━ how ridiculous they'd been. Yet they'd found time to get drunk on a soft hyacinthine sky, scaling sycamores and grinning at each other with peach-cheeks, finding summer in the chaos.
