Category: Original Content

Sparkling jewels lining the walls of the tower held unique jelly-like luminescence in the hearts of their cores, projecting glittering notes throughout and around themselves — singing a silent, radiant song of color. The sparkling of this light stared at a young, curious fellow as he climbed the crystalline steps of the tower meeting at the corners of a castle-esque wall.

Clear sunlight greeted the boy’s pale, orange, fiery eyes like old friends as he emerged out of the bouquet of glinting rainbows. His translucent skin showed all the elegantly sorted ridges of veins built throughout his body, like the lattice of a crystal. And his heart beat quickly, blood flowing to the surface of his skin, taking in the fresh rays of light, and turning his skin opaque — into a shimmering silvery sea with shifting pearlescent highlights. His pointed, opal-tipped fingers unbuttoned and released a grassy vest draped over his platinum-plated armor as he broke out into a run, wind catching his smooth, flowing, rose-gold hair. He was a child of the sun.

He climbed out to the ridge of the wall and looked out. A creature with a beak and glass leaves coating its skin glided by, looking like a tiny angel with a plume of red-orange tourmaline sticking up from its head. Light from a diamond-shaped sun spread across the expanse of emerald tipped trees and flowing peridot fields, attended to by the metallic men alongside their copper cattle. And the fields were enclosed in rainbow towers and walls, protecting the inhabitants from the grey spikes on the sides of the cave. Upon an obsidian cliff-side behind the wall, a young lady sat, staring at the sun child.

Her skin was made of cold, dark iron and was covered in a muted-brown vest and skirt. Deep-dark sapphire strands fell down to cover her ears and half her face, ending in half-curls at her neck. Her fingers were tipped with dark-purple geode-clustered crystals that shifted ever so slightly in the light, and onyx spheres above her nose popped out, still stuck to her face, and held fierce forest green rings that pierced the gaze of the sun child as she stood. She was a daughter of shadows.

His cheeks flushed with a rosy-golden glint as he stared back. Her hair was a beautiful blue abyss in the bright world he lived in, and her green eyes pulled his in like they were stroking the ribbons of fire coming out of his eyes. Her cold skin made him feel grounded and whole, like he was not as tied to the diamond sun as everyone said he was. And her fingers entranced him in the way they were not whole or perfect, unlike his artificial, pointed, and flat nails. But to her, he was nothing — just another obstacle in her way — just another annoyance chasing after her. She pursed her lips, pulling her cold, antagonizing stare away from him as she stood, and turned it back towards the diamond sun.

She glowered at it hanging from the glitter-speckled ceiling, filling the great expanse of cavernous fields with its light. The green rings in her eyes shrank as she thought about its bright light. She glanced back at the sun child, and noticing his stupor, his dazed state, she took advantage of the boy’s distractedness. After a deep breath, and with her expression cold, she ran away from the gemstone lined walls that surrounded the fields and up the grey edges of the caverns, pulling out a sharpened, flat-headed tool. She was sure of her purpose.

Finally noticing her intention, the boy shook himself out of his stupor and lept from the edge of the walls, himself donning a pointed, spear-like weapon from the ground and onto his back. He glided from edge to edge, his nails digging into the stone for grip as she held onto the wall with her tool, and both lept higher and higher up the cavernous wall, glints of light reflecting off of both of them; like a flame chasing shadow, he was on her tail. His fiery glints sped up to catch the shadow, but by the time he had reached the top of the world, she was already by the sun.