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PEOPLE WILL TELL YOU TO NEVER make friends with the dark. That it will pull you down. Swallow you whole. Leaving nothing but grieving souls, mourning your loss.
But what if you didn't have anyone left to pull you from the shadows? To keep you from sinking away?
Persephone Harrow wasn't raised to believe in a higher being. Her parents were people of science and facts, they believed in the Problem, and they believed in statistics. They were agnostics, believing in the things they could see with their eyes, not their hearts or their minds.
The day she learnt what that meant was a very sad day indeed.
For no God saved her parents on their last mission, did not spare them pain and torture. Did nothing as her parents were burnt from the inside by the deadly ghost touch.
So the seven-year-old Harrow girl stood over their graves with nothing but disdain. The sky doing the weeping for her, as she'd long run out of tears. And the clouds exploded for her rage and suffering. People were careful not to approach the grieving child, knowing she needed her time. Instead, the guests mumbled amongst themselves under their black umbrellas, reminiscing about their old friends, colleagues, or more likely, people that hadn't spoken more than a few words in passing at the now-deceased couple.
Her Father had hardly any family left, except a Mother that no one had set eyes on in years - her being stuck in a care home since Persephone was four. And her Mother's family chose to ignore the day like the plague, refusing to pack in their loathing long enough to honour their fallen daughter.
No, the only one there who brought the girl comfort during the past month of orphancy, was her Godmother. The woman wasn't officially that title, on account of her never being christened, but her parents' wills left her in the care of her. And she'd thought of her as a family since before she could walk.
So as she stood looking at the tombstones that bore her family name, she only felt secure with the woman's hand on her shoulder. As if she was keeping her steady. Keeping her from burying herself in the dirt beside them, not wanting to leave them behind.
But there was nothing she could do.
The two people she loved most in the world had left her, and not of their own volition. Their deaths hit her like a bullet to the chest. Tearing a hole in her heart and leaving her to bleed out.
"We're so sorry, Persephone, dear." A voice said beside her, invading her pained thoughts. She turned her head slightly to see her neighbours, an elderly couple in their sixties, they used to make scones for her when she would play tea time. She had no emotional capacity for tea times and playing dress up anymore, for mindless playtime in general. "If there's ever anything you need, you just come knocking." The woman wore her hair respectively, a sympathetic smile on her lips.
