To Become Stardust
For this prompt from @flashfictionfridayofficial, I decided to write something from my WIP The Champion. This flash fiction takes place hundreds of years before the story begins, but this character’s actions are felt throughout the story.
To Become Stardust
trigger warning: character death, blood via stabbing
word count: 732
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Her people were made from stardust, or so it was said. Narah always loved the stories of how the first Yuera were fashioned by the Lady Of the Dawn from stardust. How she painted their skin painted the same colour as the sky, fashioned their eyes from the flames of the sun. It was something she was proud of, to be made of stardust. She was part of something bigger, even before she won the Trials and donned the title champion.
But it was also said that when you left this world, you became stardust. That was what scared her, because even though she was part of something she was still different. If she died, she would become a small part of something, indistinguishable from the rest. There would be no more Narah, just stardust. She remembers her parents comforting her when she would cling to them when it got to that part of the story. She wasn’t afraid of monsters or dark magic, but becoming stardust was a fear so still and silent it crept up on her in the quiet moments, hovering in the back of her mind.
It isn’t quiet now, with the wind howling so loudly in her ears they ache, her eyes stinging from the merciless burn of sea salt. It seems like complete chaos, unfurling itself into a storm. Now she wants some peace, to be anywhere but in the eye of the storm of her own making. Somewhere where the fear of stardust was only a dream, a dark thought, and not an imminent future.
The building storm didn’t stop, though it should have as soon as the blade pierced her stomach. It was so quick, one moment she was all powerful, a Champion in her full glory, and the next on her knees with a knife in her hand and her blood mixing with the rain. As Champion, she thought she was untouchable, and that line of thought made her sloppy and allowed for a completely weak man to get close to her with a small knife.
But she wasn’t dead yet, even if the Champion’s Spirit, the source of her divine power, seemed to think so and was slipping from her grasp. There, it would wait for the next generation to come of age, where one of their own would take up the mantle she carried. She wondered what they would think of her- would she be just another scorned woman who spelled a giant storm to cover a large portion of Viare’s coast, or would she still be considered a hero worthy of songs, Narah the Just?
Narah could taste the salt mix with the bitter taste of blood on her tongue as she coughed violently. Her hands were sticky with silver blood, and though she tries, again, to summon the magic of the Champion’s Spirit, all she is offered is the golden shimmer of it’s magic around her bloody hands.
Rain hails down on her, but she couldn’t tell if it was raindrops on her face or tears. She could count on one hand the number of times she had cried, but it feels so strange to just give up.
But what else can she do?
Her magic failed her, she is dying and the storm is building, growing as if her approaching death only sealed it’s fate. Magic is unpredictable and uncontrollable, sometimes things just happen. There are things out of anyone’s control: magic, love, death and just life in general. She may be called a living God, but she’s still mortal, and no matter how much magic she wielded she could never be in control of everything. The one thing she was afraid of, the uncertainty and void of death, is coming for her whether she willed it or not.
“In the end, we’re all just stardust,” she whispers to herself. She really is crying, she decides, her lower lashes are wet with her own tears and not the harsh rain. It’s surreal to be crying and dying at the same time. She’s always considered herself a stone wall, immovable and unbending. Now she’s broken down, and she will become fine stardust left to fill the starry sky.
In that moment, she decides that becoming stardust isn’t as scary as she thought, and she rests her head down on the rough and jagged cliff side, waiting to become stardust.
