A Stolen Life
Pet Name: HourgIass
Owner: Melody
Theme / Type: Arctic Nokwi
Born: January 31, 2013
Gender: Female
MisticPal Name: Fate
MisticPal Age: 3195 Days
Battle Portal Stats
Level: 1
Hit Points: 12 / 12
Strength: 15
Defense: 0
Speed: 18
Intellect: 15
Misticpower: 1
Battles Won: 0
Battles Lost: 0
Books Read
Books Read:
None
Pet Profile
The inhabitants of the town often cursed their ancestors for founding it in such a place - and they cursed their own pride and lack of resources for preventing them from leaving. It was a nice town, all in all, if you ignored the environment: friendly, hardworking people; parks and retirement homes; a place that catered well to those who were stuck there for their whole lives. But sometimes in the summer the air would rise up from the swamp, and the town that had gained slight recognition for discovering new medicines would once again discover new diseases. The little hospital was always full in those warm months. Its back door, leading to the graveyard, was left open; the doctors doubling as undertakers to earn a little extra cash. They weren’t greedy; the money went to developing new cures, and year after year each epidemic was controlled and defeated. But the cost in lives was high. The town never grew, each new year’s births only just making up for those who were taken the year before. And when those hot winds descended, everyone would glance surreptitiously at their neighbors and wonder who would be first. Did he look a little pale? Was he eating right? How long before the next outbreak?
The year that Lyda became sick was a strange one. The doctors declared these as the symptoms: hallucination, leading to madness. Rapid decay of the body. Death usually occurred when a critical organ failed. When Lyda became sick, there was no known cure.
She was rushed into the hospital at the very first sign of trouble, and placed into the only open bed - its previous occupant had exited through the back door just a few moments before. She looked around at the doctors. She looked at the people who lay dying. She closed her eyes.
She could see their life.
It was like a mist around them, a whirl of the finest sand. The doctors were framed in perfect spirals, except for one who had just a few thin wisps. Many of the ill were possessed almost as greatly as the healthy, but even as she watched she could see bits of their sand blacken and vanish with one final spark of light, as if burned and consumed. She watched, fascinated, as the last hint of sand was lost from the man in the bed across from her - the light in his eyes was lost in the same moment. She watched, fascinated, as the sand around her steadily flickered into oblivion.
This was the case of those afflicted. They knew their own lifespan. They helplessly observed their final hours ticking away and then they died, their foreknowledge giving them no advantage over the cackling death. But humans, confronted by death, don’t always go silently. Like desperate animals, they cling to life in any way they can. And if life was sand, as to Lyra it now seemed to be, then she would cling to that. She had seen all the people around her die, and she saw that she didn’t have much time left herself. So when the doctor came around, she reached out and tried to steal some of his sand.
It worked.
Several weeks later, the summer left and fall was welcomed in as the end of the year’s trials. Many had died from the plague: mostly children, though two of the doctors - Lyra’s - had also been victims. But Lyra herself lived, seeming to have made a perfect recovery, as far as anyone else could tell. Only she could see the burning of the sands of lives not her own drifting around her. Only she knew why she left to move to the city, where no one would notice a few years stolen here and there. She had no choice: her years were mere hours, and she wanted to live.
She got a job as a nurse, and found comfort in that. She gave life to young children who hadn’t yet tasted what it could offer, and she in turn took it from those she judged less needing. She tried to justify her actions: she was simply equalizing the world. Death was natural, as everyone knew, and did not differentiate between deserving and undeserving people; why should she herself not try to do so? She was trying to do good. She was trying not to do evil. She was just trying to live - was that so wrong?
But still she could see the shadow of death around people, and she shuddered when it descended.
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