True North
Dystopian tale of love and a heart shaped locket
In the ruin land of the new millennium, after the fall of the Elusive Empire, Adeline, a dreamy twenty three year old daughter of a blacksmith and a peddler, finds herself singing in the halls of what’s left of a destroyed emporium. Adeline sings a song that tells the love story of her ancestors. “Crimson lips, a gentle kiss, forbidden yet bestowed. My hushed lips they do not speak of my lover’s hidden woes.”
Adeline finds a delicate necklace hidden underneath a velvet chest. The necklace has a charm in the shape of a heart. When Adeline opens the charm locket, all the compliments that once belonged to the wearer of the necklace melodiously plays. This is a special enchanted necklace that holds the fanciful compliments that people give. When the necklace charm is open, the fragile heart locket sings of all the amazing qualities you have that others have noticed and thought of to compliment you with. Every wearer of the necklace holds different compliments, each song unique to the dear beholder.
This unique musical necklace is gold plated with a pearl drop accent on the heart. The compliments sing in repeat until you close the locket. The voice that sings sweet nothings in your ear is angelic, serene, and melodious like a siren. The effervescent compliments hypnotize a few into a fragile and quivering frenzy where they begin to have lucid dreams about their future ideal selves but when they awake they feel numb and lonely because they don’t believe that the words are true.
The charmed locket reveals that Adeline is a kind gentle soul whose beauty is swan like. She is graceful and her chosen words are eloquent. Adeline is a belle that follows her True North. She blooms in the spring time along with the tulips when she dances in the fields of pink Gerber daisies. Her figure glides through the snow in the winter in circles she pirouettes like an ethereal swan. The compliments in Adeline’s locket are evanescent like her memories.
Adeline hides the dainty necklace in her bosom while she hurries back to her home. On the way home, she runs into danger. A penniless robber attacks Adeline and holds a knife at her throat. “Give me all your valuable possessions!” screamed the filthy young robber. “I only have this necklace,” replies Adeline. Adeline takes the necklace from her bosom and holds it out for the thief to grab. “What value is this necklace to me?” asks the thief. “It’s made of gold for you to trade for food and it also sings,” says Adeline. “It sings? Bah! You think I’m a fool to believe that the necklace sings!” yells the robber. “I’ll prove it to you. Here open the necklace,” says Adeline. The robber opens the heart shaped locket and hears nothing. No music plays. Just silence. “You lied to me!” yells the thief. He angrily throws back the necklace and disappears into the corridor. “Why did he throw it back? And why didn’t music play?” Adeline wondered.
Adeline opened the heart locket and out sings a sea shanty that puts Adeline into a reverie. The song repeats and repeats. “That song sounds so familiar to me,” thought Adeline.
To find out more about her new discovery, Adeline walks four miles to visit a psychic medium and asks about the mysterious heart locket necklace. Milana the psychic medium lives in a post war shelter that is hidden under a cave. Milana hasn’t gotten many visitors after the grueling war ended. The times have changed. Milana is a sixty six year old woman who wears the lines of old age on her face and hands.
“I had a feeling I would be visited by you today,” whispered Milana quietly as Adeline entered her humble home. “I have a story to tell you about your last life,” Milana began. “You were a fair maiden whose porcelain skin and long flowy mermaid hair made you the princess of the village. You were graceful, beautiful, and talented at singing and dancing. You would sing the song “Crimson lips, a gentle kiss, forbidden yet bestowed. My hushed lips they do not speak of my lover’s hidden woes.” You sang this song every night underneath the moon because you knew that only under the starry night can you share the same moon with the one you love. And you had a soulmate. He was tall as the trees, golden like the sun, and his eyes were beautiful like the aquamarine. His Greek god body and Renaissance mind flirted with you, he made you blush. You couldn’t help but fall in love with him. But he went away. His sailor heart belonged to the wavering sea. His heart longed for the muse in you but longed more for the freedom of the mystical and mysterious waves. So you waited for him. You waited for your sailor to return to the lighthouse, but he never returned.”
“Oh my,” says Adeline. “That’s the song that the locket sang yesterday. I’ve heard that song many times before in my dreams.”
“Let me tell you of your present. You have just crossed paths with your past soulmate. You ran into him yesterday. He tried to steal your heart but he got scared and hastily returned it.”
“What?” Adeline sat there in shock. “The robber. He tried to steal my heart locket yesterday. He is…my soulmate?”
“Yes. Charming and mischievous, but he is a sailor who got shipwrecked during the war. He had no choice but to try to steal for food, but instead you were the one who robbed him of his heart.”
About the Creator
Milly Mercury
artist, singer, songwriter, poet, 💗, lover
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Sad Superpower
I have a knack for taking an idea and turning it into a creation. My chosen creative outlets that make my heart soar are writing, singing, drawing, painting, acting, dancing, and interpreting. I love to interpret my feelings and point of view and create art out of thin air. I believe that the closest thing we have to the divine is artistic creation of any kind, and that can be specific or general to anything. Cooking is artistic creation, architecture is artistic creation. Humans need to be creative for survival and every human is an artist who interprets in their own way with their own senses and ideas. I love to be inspiration to any beholder by creating art through as many outlets that I can find. I’m not bragging that I’m great at every outlet I dabble at but it’s so much fun experiencing them. I am a singer, songwriter, poet, author, fashionista, and hairdresser. I actually like labels, when it’s light, fun, and not discriminatory. I like putting labels on myself because it helps me define myself through words and affirmations. I like to remind myself of my given labels because I want to entrain my self consciousness to love myself and see the beauty in myself so that I can reflect it back to others and show others what is beautiful within themselves. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, beauty is everywhere in the universe and just because a beholder judges it as beautiful or imperfect, does not make it so. I’ve written a song titled “Good in Goodbye.” When I wrote it, I had just said my goodbyes to my boyfriend, we broke up. I used that emotion I felt that day to write lyrics about how I felt. I wondered what exactly the good in goodbye was when it hurt to say goodbye to the one you love. In the song I cry because I can’t hear birds singing and I can’t see that the sky is blue because I had lost you. I explained in an interview with stereo stickman, a music blog in the UK about how there is good in goodbye. The good is the day after the necessary tears were shed. Crying is a good way for the body to release pent up energy in the body and cleanses your energy from sadness to acceptance. Crying also relieves stress, helps you sleep better, and releases endorphins. That’s part of the reason why the next morning after you’re done crying, you’re ready to start a new day full of sunshine, birds chirping, and blue skies. I wrote a children’s book on dealing with sadness and it introduces the topic of mental health. I wrote a cute story about Beethoven the Bear, a talented young bear cub who played music with his friend Pete the Baby Seal. One day Pete goes on vacation and leaves Beethoven by his lonesome. Beethoven is a Bipolar Bear- he is half honey bear and half polar bear. He experiences sadness deeper than other bears, but his sensitivity to his feelings is not a curse but it is his super power. He realizes that it’s perfectly ok to cry and have sad feelings and that it doesn’t make him q bad bear and that he’s welcomed and accepted in the world just the way he is. I wrote this book to inspire parents to be nurturing and graceful toward their children when they are sad because talking about how it isn’t shameful to cry, it teaches that it’s okay to share sad feelings and to not feel like they should feel guilty about feeling sad. This might help kids grow up to be more self aware and conscious adults who know to talk to someone when they need to. The goal is to have awareness on mental health and the importance of lifting that stigma because it’s a social stigma that was taught, so it should be taught early so that it isn’t a taboo topic. I want the book to inspire kids and adults alike to know that they are special, loved, and welcome in the world just the way they are, with no stigma coming from a label. I wanted to turn my curse into my super power by creating Beethoven the Bear. I want Beethoven to inspire the world to accept others like Beethoven who’s been given a label because of his sadness. But being blue is not a bad thing. Blue is a special color because it is the color of the hottest flame, it is the color of the sky, and the ocean. Blue is the color of creation and the earth is blue. Being blue is special. So I hope that Beethoven inspires others to take their blue and turn it into their sensitive super power. I am Milly Mercury and I make a difference in the world with my voice.
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Peanuts and Crackerjack
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