THE HOLLOW , ( grishaverse )

one: A KERCH GUESTHOUSE

THE HOLLOW
one: A KERCH GUESTHOUSE

LILIA HAS NEVER SEEN A GHOST. But there's always a first time for everything.

It first appears on the wind, tangling with the rain and the breeze and the smog-thickened stench of Ketterdam's streets. It hung by the open window, as heavy as choking, stifling smoke, like a blur in a crudely taken photograph.

At first, she'd thought it was her mother. That the bitter old woman had finally made good on her dying promise; the curse she'd croaked as her life had drained away, an unholy vow, that Lilia would be plagued with the weight of her presence for the rest of her living years. But the ghost is far too peaceful to be her mother.

Her mother was a tsunami, an unrelenting torrent of malevolent destruction, tearing people apart at the seams.

Her mother had been rotten and wicked and cruel, and refused to raise her daughter as her own. She'd resented Lilia from the moment she was born; for ruining her life, for relying on her, for letting her die before her time. For not returning to her when she'd called, every time, for the darkness she seemed to see within her. The darkness that blackened her eyes and her heart.

The darkness.

After all, Lilia is her mother's daughter.

But who could really blame her, that darkness had befallen Lilia, at a young age? Abandoned the moment she was born, unwanted and unnecessary, left on her father's doorstep without a name or a face, or a single thing to call her own, save for the old woollen cape she'd been wrapped in. Raised in resentment and fear. She'd only met her mother at ten and her hatred spiralled. She never stood a chance. She's the forgotten. The hidden. A ghost of a girl.

Unlike her mother, Lilia's nature - bitter and broken, consumed by the darkness and despair - was entirely circumstance.

Her mother had been born that way, all twisted and warped inside, to parents who were dead long before Lilia arrived. Often, she wonders if her mother was the reason for their deaths; it certainly would not surprise her. Her mother was poison.

There was evil in her heart.

But Lilia, Lilia had once been innocence. All gentle, childlike naivety and cherry blossom orchards, pale dresses and soft curls. Just a young girl lost amongst the flowers of a meadow, dancing, dancing, dancing. Her head in the clouds, a world of blissful daydream. But, by the time she reached fifteen, her world was dark. A raging storm on an angry sea, sinking the stoic ship that carried her steady. Hatred had bloomed in her chest and soured her heart. The victim of her mother, of her father's rage and brother's cruelty, of the disinterest of the false woman - his father's wife - who'd raised her.

She'd never stood a chance.

And, now she's rotting from the inside out.

She can feel it every night when she tries to sleep, every morning when she wakes from a restless sleep with her legs tangled into threadbare blankets. It leaves a sour taste in her mouth.

She's tried to wash it away; water, soap, liqueur, bliss. Nothing relieves her of the rotting. It only makes things worse.

Some days, she can't even stand the light. It burns her.

Too much moonlight sweeps in through the thatched window of a Kerch guesthouse. It's rundown and older than her grandfather, but she can scarcely afford to stay each night; all her money leeched away at a bliss den two streets over, in the thick of the pleasure district, leftover dregs and scraps of kruge pushing her on into the next evening. The moon stretches out towards her bed like pale bony fingers. A nightmare bleeding into reality.