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Tell me a story of two lives, two children with the blood of gods coursing in their veins (and with it the burdens of curses they’ll never shake) forced to grow up before they were meant to. Write about children bred in an environment rich with fumes of alcohol and watered with foul words, no flowers of Febreeze to hide of scent of regret and anger and madness, and faced with challenges no child should have to face. What of lost walks on the beach and movie nights with tv dinners perched carefully across knees? Of the first bike lesson and first day of school? Children are meant to be protected from the evils of the world, not raised to fight monsters that belong only in myths and fairytales (and not raised in the shadows of monsters that live right alongside them). Except this ought to be no fairytale, only harsh, harsh reality where infants have callouses and toddlers know how fast they need to run.
Tell me the story of a girl who learned the world was cruel and held a golden sword before she was old enough to understand. Of a boy born in spoils, raised in desperation and depression, and left to appease. Spill ink and draw a map; what about how they left –one who become a ghost to those left behind and the other who left because the ghosts were too much. What of where they went, over land and overseas.
Tell me the story of a boy who would grow up with too many people believing in him so he never believed in himself, and a girl who thought no one did so she walked alone and trusted only the strength buried inside her. Don’t forget they are younger siblings with elder sisters who protected them in toxic households the only ways they knew how: with comforting touches and a shield of biting words in the face of vicious other. Yet they are also the same sisters who in the end leave –one because she thought there was nothing left, the other because there was too much standing between them.
Tell me about a girl who rubbed salt in her wounds to stay alive, and to feel alive as the ship rocked beneath her feet and whiskey rich voices hissed in her ears –salt that only comes free in the waters of a freshwater river that whispers home, home, home over smooth rocks. And what of a boy given to a goddess, and passed yet to another who teaches him the ways of the wild and of Rome, of reality and myth and how the line between them is but a blur —of how he too found a home across the river that ran quick and fast.
What of the nights of torture at the Wolf’s paws? Breath in harsh puffs so pale and white in chilled air as the taunts of the Mother Wolf ring across a ruined mansion. There is no weakness in a pack. And weakness can only be found through work and the pushing of limits. Conquer or die. There is no option three. Nothing but ducking and rolling and slashing with swords.
Tell me about their eyes, blue and black –matched like day and night and just as ancient despite the youthful skin that frames them. Tell me about how they met for the first time and there was no spark, no love at first sight, no camaraderie –just an exhausted girl dripping river water still acting proud in the face of a stunned boy. But that is not the end.
How matched were their gladius, their pila, their fists, their minds? How did the metal sing when they meet mid-air and zang apart a breath later? Tell me how they danced in soft sand, how conflict turned to scowls to determination and finally to friendly competition. How somehow months slipped by and they found they fit together like a wheel and axle, a perfect machine with no flaws. Impress me with legends of their bravery and courage, how monsters fell to the Imperial Gold at their feet, and how gentle hands kept them both standing upright. How the girl shucked her past for a future built on cobblestone and purple cotton, and how the boy tried to be what the others envisioned for him.
And give me a girl who didn’t do that, who looked at the boy and saw exactly that –blond hair and blue eyes, wide and stressed with expectations– who knew that heritage and blood only goes so far and guarantees nothing. Build their friendship from this, from respect and trust and quiet words that bare seemingly simple secrets that are far from simple.
Tell me a story of strangers turned friends turned more. Of winding roads of fate that bring souls together and tear them apart in the most cruel of ways. About a boy who lost his memories and started a new life and a girl who searched and waited for him to return. Tell me how their reunion was bitter because time wears down edges and here it ground away at their until they were no longer a perfect fit. How time shaped them so that their well-oiled machine grew rusty and ground to a halt and left to be choked by weeds.
Dip your quill and write me an epic of a lionhearted boy and a girl of gold and strength who thought they were everything, but at the end turned only to be ships in the night gliding past each other. Because they both grew up into what they were meant to be –a kind leader with benevolence in his blood not needing the layers of expectation placed upon him and she a leader of quiet strength, with determination and steel in her bones and courage in her heart.
Tell me how those children grew up, how the girl let go and the boy finally took control of his strands of fate to weave his own future just as the girl did on a California beach so many years prior. Tell me how they saved the word and it now turns on, just as they must turn ever on, settling into what was meant to be –only not with each other.