Ch. 1: Star-Child: Forgotten Sleep

She awoke from her sleep drenched in sweat. She covered her face with her palms as she waited for her heart to return to its resting state. Gently she smoothed away the auburn strands of hair that clung to her forehead. She had dreamt about him again. She shook her head as if trying to rid him from her thoughts. His memory continued to plague her mind.

She noticed that her bed was bare, and glanced over to a pile of disheveled bedding on the floor. This was the fourth night in a row that her REM cycle had been interrupted by night terrors. Her throat was dry from screaming, and her pillow had small holes throughout it from her fingernails digging into it. The lack of sleep was also starting to make its impression on her physical appearance. From across the room, she could see her reflection peering back at her. Dark crescents cradled the bottom of her eyes, and her skin was sallow and glistening with the droplets of sweat. The image was ghastly enough to disturb what one might call a "normal" person, but she had grown accustomed to her old, unchanging friend.

The world saw her counterpart as a petite 20-ish young woman, but only she knew the truth. Her rightful name was Freja, and she was unlike any mortal woman. She had lived long enough to see the rising of nations and the crumbling of empires. Humanity, in essence, was all the same. With each new era they boasted of their accomplishment and progress, when in reality, the only consistent thing of which man was capable was death. Try as they might, they never lived long. Men who lived past 100 were reviled and hounded for the secret of their prolonged life. Legends spoke of some even attaining 900 years - an age that the modern man couldn't even fathom. This desire to achieve old age greatly puzzled Freja. Why would humans so dearly want to become a shriveled mass riddled with pain? Were they so afraid of death? Why did they so desire to be remembered? What was it about a lack of existence that caused them so much fear? Most wanted to believe that death was a journey, or the commencement of a new beginning, but if they honestly gave this notion merit, Freja wondered why men did not embrace the idea of death and run toward it with open arms. Freja would never understand the reasoning behind man's thought process, and for the most part, she had resigned herself to stop trying. For brief periods of time she would try to "figure them out," and for a little while it entertained her as a parlor game might. Eventually her game (the minds of men) would bore her, and she'd search for another way to amuse herself. In her youth, she'd had her fun with humans. She delighted in toying with men's hearts, and inflicting the same agony on them that she'd seen them carry out on the females of their species. Freja had since outgrown this youthful folly, and though she hated to admit it, on some levels she desired companionship. She refused to let a mere mortal serve as her partner. She had tried it, but found it exhausting to keep replacing her spouses because of their short lifespan. She had little more respect for them than the primordial goo that she had seen them develop from. She had lived billions of years and probably had billions more to go. Perhaps in time humans would evolve to become a desirable counterpart, but she craved to be with another from her own kind.

She was from a race the ancients had called Star-Children, and although primitive, the name suited her well enough. Whenever a star's light is snuffed from the sky, the universe creates another being from it's matter. Matter is never created nor destroyed, it is simply reconfigured into another thing or being. Freja's death as star commenced her life as a "Star-Child." Freja had only met a handful of Star-Children in her lifetime- none of which she was very fond. It was a possibility that she had encountered more of her kind, but it was only within the last few thousand years of life that she discovered their identifying feature that made them different from the humans. On the underside of her left wrist, Freja bore the mark. Before she had encountered more of her kind, Freja had seen the mark as nothing more than a flaw; an unsightly blemish on her ivory skin. It was a symbol of pride for her, and she had even formed a habit of tracing its edges with her fingertips when she was deep in thought.

The last Star-Child that Freja had met mad an impression on her that wasn't easily forgotten, and he had a name to match: Narcissus. His vanity mirrored that of his legendary name's sake. But, to be fair, Freja admitted to herself that he had reason to boast. He stood out in any crowd. Like her, he had ivory skin. His body was muscled and towered over most men at 6'8.'' On his head, he was crowned with a sheen of dove-white hair. His height was not surprising since she herself was 6 feet tall, but his charisma made him seem larger than life. His eyes seemed to hold their own magnetic power within their crystal blue irises. They were pratically opaque. With them it was as if he could penetrate a person's very soul and discover their innermost secrets. It was Narcissus' arrogance that had led to his discovery of Freja's true origin. His failure at reading her fears and desires was something he couldn't comprehend. Why she didn't fall for him like every other mortal woman was a quandry that he made his personal mission to solve.