Stardust (A Voltron Fanfic)

Prologue

Word Count: 1,126

This story for us begins in the shadowed confinement of a lonely orphanage parked on the edge of a field, multiple miles from known civilization, much less roads. This is the place of dumped dreams washed up on the shore of a place where most children, tucked away in their cozy homes, never get to see.

You look over that hill, there? Peaking over the tips of rust-colored grass, past the brick covered orphanage with a dull brown roof in great need of repair, into a field covered in trees while the swaying grass makes the place appear, for a moment, to look like an ocean of dying life, you look so fast you almost miss it. Almost.

Be still, and listen. Do you hear the pounding to of feet? That's the sound of an army. Dozens of children running rampant through the grass. Through skeletal trees who reach up to the sky in silent prayer, while the bone-chilling wind runs through their branches, losing what little brush of color they have left in the known world to the wind of winter while clashing the sticks together sounding like a symphony that only mother nature could pull off. Do you hear it?

Now, zoom in. Closer. Closer. There. The flash of pink that barely catches your eye before it's gone again. You can hear her heartbeat lodged in her throat while her feet pound on the ground, raising dust that collects around her feet and catches hold of the air in a choking mist. You can taste the dirt on your tongue, feel the cracked ground beneath your toes thirstingly in need of a good rain.

Look at the child. Brown curls cascade over flushed cheeks. Green eyes full of life look out over the swaying grass and she unknowingly pulls her pink coat tighter around herself. Her shoes are worn, her face pale as the last bit of collected warmth is lost to the wind running through her, frayed ends fall behind her. The ghost of a scarf wrapped around her neck.

This is where our story begins.

Rose liked this place, running through the field, she could see everything happening below, the cotton candy stand tucked to a corner of the fence, the cake sitting on a park bench a little way aways from the rest of the kids, too occupied with the task of enjoying themselves to notice the mountain of sugar placed not too far from them.

Getting a bit bored with the view, she ran to play with the other kids who were now screaming as much as she was and running around the bare patch of grass in the front of the orphanage, while blood-red leaves drifted onto the ground all around them.

Birds, hidden from sight, chirped happily in the trees while fellow orphans ran around clutching cotton candy sticks long emptied of the sticky sweetness wrapped around them and Rose joined in on the made-up game, screaming all the while.

It didn't matter that she was getting her pink coat dirty; she had fallen so many times now that no matter what Miss Mary did to get the stains out, they wouldn't yet come out all of the way, a constant reminder of the multiple adventures she had had up till this point. Most were from falling, but who didn't fall time to time?

"Rosetta! Stop rolling in the mud and come here child, it's time to blow out the candles." Miss Mary called, wiping her hands on her loose-hanging apron. Obeying, Rose jumped out of the way of the other kids and went to join the caretaker.

"It isn't every day that a little girl turns six." Miss Mary had said and she is always right, Rose thought as she was led to a picnic table where the biggest cake she had ever seen sat waiting with candles sitting on the top. There weren't any presents no one working in the orphanage could afford them, but the cake was enough as the song was sang and plates were handed out.

However, Rose noticed as the day progressed that there was one couple perched on the edge of their seats overseeing the occasion, and their eyes never left Rose. She had been introduced to them already; Miss Mary had explained that they would be adopting her, whatever that meant, as long as she could eat cake every day for the rest of her life.

But, eventually the fun ended too soon and before she knew it, it was ready to get into bed.

Now, tucked under her covers, Rose thought about the day. It had been the best of her life and tomorrow would be an even bigger one. She thought, her mind drifting to her plan to jump off of the biggest tree she could find to see if she could fly.

Suddenly, just when she was about to drift off into unconsciousness, a loud, earth shattering boom sounded from the floor below, shaking the already thin legs of the bed she lay in.

She sat up straight and looked around wildly. It couldn't have been Miss Mary; Rose didn't know anybody who could make that big of a noise as she replayed the sound in her head over and over. What was it?

She listened closer into the, once again, still night, but she could no longer hear anything but the children's' steady and slow breathing all around her.

Just when she started to think that it was her imagination, she heard it again, louder this time. Other kids around her started to stir and sit up at the sound, all staring at the door at the other end of the room. Low murmuring started to grow after only seconds of the second boom, but it was all silenced as a third tremor shook through the building, shattering the door to splinters.

On the other side of the entrance stood a tall figure, it's face hooded and masked, yellow slits adorned it in more than one place looking almost like eyes and Rose was certain that the thing's eyes were trained on her. A robe hung to the floor around the figure, giving no one the thought that whatever this thing was, wasn't human. No one moved, no one spoke.

Then, with a steady hand, the figure brought it around in a circle through the air, suddenly shrouding the room with a thick mist.

Hard coughs racked up everywhere, there were even some screams, and Rose's ears even caught the sounds of some children beginning to struggle for breath, like the mist was suffocating them. Rose didn't have any problem with the purple tinted mist, and her head hit the floor as her eyes fell shut.

...

Well, what'd you think? For the people who read this before I changed it, is it any better? I kinda got the idea to start the story like this from "In the Woods" by Tana French, which, if you like a good murder mystery, I highly recommend.