Nola

The sky has turned a dusky blue in the fading light. Clouds stained a warm purple streak across the sky. I clutch my mother’s heart-shaped locket dangling from my neck, anxiety clawing at my ribcage. What was once a lush forest has now turned into dead land. A place touched by the war years ago. Dead, mostly limbless trees stick up out of gray dirt. Flower bushes dot the land in tangles of stems. I stop for a moment to admire a flower, the center of which is a deep red that bleeds outwards into bright white petals. They’re beautiful and produce a sweet scent that reminds me of vanilla. Miri said they like to grow near dead things. Nearby one winds its way through someone’s rotted ribcage. My stomach tightens at the thought of her. Her green eyes, so dark they nearly looked black, with golden pupils shaped like a cat’s. Her sharp teeth and dimples flashing whenever she smiled. She was native to this planet that my mother and I came to nine years ago, when I was ten, along with many other people from Earth. We met when I accidentally came across her town, built in the middle of a forest. She was unlike anyone I had ever met, and it made her perfect. We only knew each other for a couple of months, but I think I was in love with her.

And now she’s dead. Shot two weeks ago by a needlessly terrified human man. My own shot came barely half a second after his, but that was still too late. His body had crumpled to the ground and when I started to turn around part of me already knew what I’d see. Deep, blue blood spread slowly around her head like a morbid halo. Her eyes were open, turned towards a baby-blue sky, but seeing nothing. I stood over her for a long time, unable to accept what I was seeing until I dropped to my knees and cradled her to my chest, a ragged scream ripping from my throat, broken only by sobs. I had called the grass up and around us the same way a native Lordran might be able to and pulled a storm down that I didn’t want, but couldn’t seem to stop.

I look down at myself now. My clothes are still stained with her blood. I hoist my backpack higher onto my shoulders and walk faster, only to come to a rigid stop. An unnatural yet painfully familiar sound floats through the air. Someone is screaming. I look to my left, where a crumbling dirt road lies nearby. I follow it with my eyes and spot something large and heavily shadowed in the distance. I start walking again, diagonally, so that I’ll reach the road.

I stop a few minutes later by a car parked on the side of the road. A human woman sits on her knees next to it. She doesn’t notice me and she doesn’t stop screaming. She rocks herself slightly, her hands clasped over her ears. Blood slides from the gaps between her fingers and trickles down her forearms. It drops like tears from her eyes, down her cheeks, and splatters into the dirt. It’s the plants here. Nearly all of them, aside from grass and trees, are poisonous to humans. The only reason I’m not affected by them is because, like my mother, I’m something other than human. I look like one, but I’m not. Humans started dying a few months after we came here. They noticed how the Lordrans can control plants (similarly to how I can) and blamed them for the poison. Then they started a war that wiped out a huge portion of the native population as well as most of the humans who had come over from what is now a wasteland of a planet. My mother died in that war. The woman stops screaming for a moment, breathing raggedly, and the change pulls me from my thoughts. I place my hand tentatively on the gun tucked into the waistband of my sweatpants. Her screams start up again. I pull it out, but hesitate when I point it at her. She’s already dead, I think, and if I leave her she’ll only suffer for longer. I pull the trigger. Her scream cuts out, replaced by a gunshot loud enough to make my ears ache. There’s a flutter of wings behind me, from a flock of birds that had likely been resting peacefully in a dead tree. I stare at her limp form, at the blood flowing from her head, and pooling in the dirt. I walk over and peer through the windows of her car. I stop breathing. My stomach tightens and my body temperature rises with my mounting horror. There’s something in there that I will never be able to forget. A baby is strapped into a car seat in the back of the car. Dried streams of blood stain its neck and cheeks, and its eyes are open, turned towards the car floor, though it will never see anything ever again. I take off, running from the horror laid out before me, my feet pounding hard and fast into the ground.

I run until my lungs ache and my legs threaten to give out beneath me. I drop my backpack and flop down onto my back, right in the middle of the road. It’s not as if many vehicles travel along here anyway. There's barely anyone left to drive them anymore. I heave down gulps of night air, slightly thick and ashy this close to a war sight. The two moons shine brightly overhead, along with a carpeting of stars that pull me back in time.

We lay side by side in a field, watching the night sky. At least I was, my eyes focused steadily on the brilliant scene above me. And then I glanced at Miri. She was looking at me. I smiled.

“Nola,” she said my name softly.

“Miri.”

“Hi.”

I laughed. “Hi.”

“You’re beautiful,” she said, dimples showing faintly in the silvery light.

“More beautiful than that?” I tipped my head towards the sky but didn’t look away from her.

“Yes.”

I grinned and flipped onto my side to better face her. I laid my hand against her cheek. I looked into her eyes, shining brightly in the dark.

“I think you are too.”

I close my eyes now and tears spill out. We’d decided to travel to the Glanass Falls together, a magnificent sight that neither of us had ever seen. The only reason I’m still traveling to it instead of wallowing in my own sorrow is because I know she would have wanted me to keep going.

***

A little less than two weeks later I walk through a lush forest, untainted by war. I’m close enough now that I can hear the Falls whispering in my ears. I walk until I’m standing at the edge of a large slope. I can’t see it through the wall of trees below, but I can hear the roar of water, and I know that it’s waiting beyond the trees. I clutch my heart-shaped locket, preparing to half climb, half walk down the slope. Until someone screams at me.

“You can’t go down there,” a man’s panicked voice yells.

I snap my head to the right. A human man, about forty with brown hair and red blistering skin runs towards me. My heart pounds, drowning out the sound of the Falls. His hands clamp down around my shoulders. He slams me backwards into a tree trunk. I think it was unintentional, unnecessary force brought on by panic, but it scares me enough that I shove him as hard as I can. He falls to the ground, only to get back up and reach for me again. His eyes are so bloodshot that they look entirely red. The blisters on his hands have burst, spilling watery blood across his hands. He stares at me. Stares through me, as if unaware of what he is really seeing. He grabs my shoulders again, pulling me roughly.

“It’s the plants down there,” he shrieks.

“It’s the plants everywhere,” I scream back.

“There’s more down there. There’s more. They’ll kill you.”

“Stop,” I scream into his now bloody face.

He’s pulling and pushing at me, unwilling to let go.

“Sto-”

He pushes me too hard. My foot snags on a rock stuck in the dirt behind me and I go down. Right over the edge of the slope. I slam into the slanted ground backwards, my neck stretching painfully as I flip and then tumble down. I crash to the bottom, my head cracking against a tree trunk, hard enough to make my ears buzz. For a moment I crouch on my hands and knees, seeing nothing but black, and then, slowly my vision clears. My head throbs enough to make me feel like my brain is about to burst from my skull. I reach up. Blood coats the side of my face. It slides over my ear and onto my neck. I wipe my fingers on my pants and then wipe at the blood on my neck with the sleeve of my shirt.

I use the same tree that I hit my head on to pull myself up. I steady myself for a moment and then look over my shoulder. The man seems to have forgotten that I exist and is instead staring at his arms. And clawing at them. They’re bright red with blood now. The poison in the plants here always seems to make humans want to crawl out of their own skin. It makes them desperate for the impending claim of death.

I turn away from him and start walking. I stop when I reach the edge of the tree line. Leaves and branches still obscure my view. I take a breath, knowing that Miri would have bounded straight through them, unwilling to wait. I exhale and step through.

My mouth falls slightly open and my mind stills at what I see. Two massive waterfalls spill from two huge rivers. They converge into one towards the bottom, where they drop into a wide pool of water that spills over into its own waterfall, all of it continuing into a river stretching far below and into the distance. I realize I came here at the right time, because the sun is at just the right point in the sky for it to set the Falls on fire. Liquid gold roars before my eyes. My mind is quiet, my heart slowly beginning to open up. It’s probably not the best idea for someone who has just sustained a head injury, but I walk slowly to the edge of the flattened rock I’ve been standing on. It’s raised above and just to the front of the Falls. I leave my backpack lying on the center of the rock’s surface and sit down, my legs dangling over the edge.

I open up my locket. The sun’s light sparkles on its silver surface. Inside there is a picture of my mother with her long blonde hair and green eyes, smiling with a perfect happiness that I don’t often see anymore. On the other side is a picture of my father who I never got to meet. He’s smiling too, just as beautifully as she is. I close it back up and look at the burning Falls.

If Miri were here she’d be standing, her arms spread wide, as if she could consume the entire world. She’d be grinning and screeching with joy. Because there is still beauty in the world. I can see that here. A chance at living and not just surviving. I stand up and spread my arms wide. I see the beauty, I feel it. It’s like breathing in life itself. I smile and tip my head back, screeching into the sky.