Unlikely Companionship

• Seraphina Lim, Grade 10, Emmaus College
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'The Write Track 2015' competition

Once, in the dark recesses of the void, an explosion rippled the fabric of the universe. Waves of cold and glittering crystals on paths beyond the void, to where life thrived on planets orbiting yellow stars, snugly comfortably embraced in their light and warmth.

But hold that thought as we travel in the other direction, for this wasn't just another void, this was the original void. The oldest of the old, the one where only a small silver-blue frost star resided, forever lonesome because none could stand the shroud of cold energy it emanated.

A star ripped apart by loneliness and crushed by hope, finally giving up on living, because living was so difficult when alone.

And left in its place is a little girl of glass. With hair of opals floating around her head and eyes as green as emeralds glinting in a jeweller’s window, she woke to a world lit by phosphorescent blue diamond dust, littered with ice and crystals. Her silver skin shimmered with violet script, often changing with her thoughts, glowing with streams of starlight in her ice blue bones.

Her slight frame wrapped in webs of frost lightning, flowing into an indigo dress. The hems embroidered with the forming of the universe and the birth of time. She clutched herself as she wept, tears of light on her face as she fled.

She sped across galaxies and kingdoms, seas of stars and fields of asteroids. She ran until she could not and found herself in a land long lost from the minds of men, and the memories of stars.

A land of ice riddled with shadows, a prison of cold iron and frozen lakes, where she slipped into the icy embrace of tears shed by ancient fears held captive for aeons.

They lurk in the darkness, morphing, monsters in all but name. They hide their serpentine bodies within the swaying seagrass, shifting shadow cloaks over wispy wings. A mish mash of misty forms constantly evaporating and condensing simultaneously. Their only constants being their twisting auras and crystal hearts. Luminescent hides no thicker than the water's surface.

She was radiant with beauty, unearthly with aged sorrow, her flickering silver aura emanating resigned misery, yet not a single drop of fear.

The ancient fears were curious of this cold-sharp-glass child, never had they been acquainted with one so desperate, so shattered, so broken, that they could no longer feel the spike of terror, the oppression of paranoia or the squirm of anxiety.

The ancient fears settled, watching the child, who had captivated them so, crawl into tranquil dreams. Awaiting her far away awakening, they hovered, sentinels guarding their new obsession.

For the first time, the girl slumbered, fearless and at peace. A ripple of magic shivered beneath the surface of the universe, the casual shifting of a sleeping child seeking comfort, and in the dark recesses of the void wherein the glass girl once resided, a new frost star begun to spin into existence.