The World Above

Chapter One: She Dreamed of a World Among the Stars

The air was cold, bitter, and strong. Stronger than most nights. It danced timidly through Aliyah’s white hair, twirling it playfully in the chilly midnight air. Taking a deep breath, she watched as the regressed air escaped her pale lips in tentatively, translucent clouds; trailing upward like frail smoke into the night sky.   

Bundling more tightly in her azure shawl, she stifled a yawn as she retraced Orion’s Belt in the clustered constellations overhead. Aliyah, for as far back as she could remember, had always nurtured a love for the stars. Her mother (Queen Laura) had found the hobby of star gazing incredibly fascinating and to show her support had hired tutors and knowledge masters to teach Aliyah the patterns and names of each star and constellation.

At such a young age Aliyah had devoured the knowledge as quickly and efficiently as any scholar; and was dubbed a hindrance and anomaly to the old masters when at the age of nine she suggested a prominent theory about gas being the substance of stars.

Allowing herself to further recollect, she gazed down at the dark shawl she held close to herself. It was an old crochet quilt, worn and threadbare at the edges, faded and shabby from years of continuous use. Aliyah’s mother had knitted it for her when she was six, dubbing it the Star Blanket; so that Aliyah could still view the stars during the day. When the blanket was drawn over her head the sunlight filtered through the crochet holes, resembling stars. Aliyah had treasured the blanket since the very first day it was given to her and even more so after the passing of her mother when she was fifteen.

Shaking herself from the lingering memories of the past-stargazing always seemed to bring-she glanced over toward her brother Plight, who, somehow slept comfortably on the hard stone flooring, the cool wind caressing his curly, black locks. He was laying on his back, his arms folded behind his head to compensate for the pillow he had forgotten to bring. Feeling guilty for making him stay out for so long she removed her shawl, draping it over him, for what little warmth it could offer.

Aliyah and Plight had always been very resilient to colder weather and that was certainly no stranger to the occupants of the desert kingdom Stark. While most days accommodated an unbearable heat, the nights were equally as bad with their freezing temperatures. Most citizens did not even venture from their homeswithin the midnight hours without garments tightly bundled around their bodies, such that only their eyes could be seen peering out through the small openings in their clothes.

To add to the abnormalities Aliyah and her brother were ‘in a way’ quite unusual when it came to appearances, not only was their skin an odd pale color-that could not be tanned by the sun. Aliyah herself bore eyes that changed color constantly, while Plight’s iris's stayed a continuous inky black. Aliyah’s hair shimmered like polished white marble and Plight’s glistened darker than any ink. They were opposites in every way possible.

Plight feared the dark, Aliyah welcomed it. Plight was your typical introvert, Aliyah your outgoing extrovert. Yet they still found comfort in each other, because of their differences. For in all Stark there was not another person like them and this was the reason for their isolation from others. People feared them. Most humans have a natural instinct to fear things that are different or things they don’t understand, but this seemed to almost go past that.

Maids and Servants that were hired into the castle refused to touch them, or for that matter- go within a ten-foot radius of the sky children. Stories of their arrival, thirteen years ago spread through the palace like the plague and still continued to this day-whenever a new work hand was hired on. Some believed the king was keeping them locked away as secret weapons in the chance war was declared on a neighboring kingdom, others assumed the two children had brainwashed the royal family and was secretly ruling the kingdom by using the king as a blind puppet.