Lilith's silver eyes flew open.
She didn't move.
She just lay there, staring at the ceiling, breathing heavily.
The room was familiar, her room, her ceiling, the morning light coming through the curtains, but her body hadn't gotten the memo yet.
Her heart was still back in that forest. Still feeling those fingers around her throat.
She pressed a hand to her neck.
Nothing, No kind of bruising or mark.
She exhaled slowly through her nose.
"Just a dream. It was just a dream"
But then she looked down at her arm and the blood was very much real, and the word came back to her unbidden, low and furious in a voice that didn't belong to this world —
"WITCH".
She sat up fast, pressing both palms flat against her bed like she needed to feel something solid. She stayed like that for a few seconds.
Breathing.
The familiar smell of her room.
The distant sound of her parents' voices already building in the living room.
You're here. You're home. You're fine.
She pressed a hand over her heart and waited for it to slow down.
It did. Eventually.
She pressed a hand to her head.
"If this keeps going, I might actually start losing my mind. Or worse, die in my sleep."
A pause.
"That would be so horrible. Well, on second thought, maybe not that bad."
"Ding, ding, ding." Her alarm rang.
Lilith reached for the small clock on her bedside table.
"7:00 AM."
"Holy shit. I'm late. This is so bad."
Lilith always woke by 5:00 AM every day to make sure she arrived at school early. She was a scholarship student at a prestigious academy, one filled with filthy rich students and privileged and scholarship students were heavily monitored. Any small mistake could lead to immediate expulsion.
She swung her legs off the bed to get up.
"Ouch!" she exclaimed.
She looked at her arm. It was bleeding, more than it should have been. On her way home from her part-time job the day before, she had fallen off her bicycle and gotten a small cut. She had hoped her parents would notice her pain when she got home. As expected, they hadn't, too busy arguing as always.
She stared at the wound now.
"It definitely wasn't this bad before"
"Could it be —"
"Oh my."
This was the first time anything from one of her dreams had left a physical mark in reality.
"Ding, ding, ding."
"7:10 AM."
Lilith stood up.
"First , clean this wound, dis-infect and bandage it. Then shower. Then school. And I also need to write."
Every single day without exception, Lilith wrote, a poem, a short story, whatever came to her. She always made sure to write something, and she preferred doing it in the morning.
She sat at her dressing table and looked at herself.
She had always been considered a strange child: a brown girl, chubby, with long curly hair and those mysterious silver eyes that doctors had tried to explain with chemical reactions and scientific jargon, because neither of her parents had silver eyes.
Everywhere she went, people stared. And honestly? She loved the attention. Just not always, especially not at school.
"She's a freak." She always heard that.
"Ding, ding, ding."
"7:20 AM."
Lilith opened her drawer, took out antiseptic, cleaned the blood away, applied cream to the wound and bandaged it.
She then undressed and stepped into her bathtub, scrubbed herself clean, washed her curly hair, and rushed through the process. She stepped out, dried herself, put on her bathrobe, changed the damp bandage, and proceeded with her skincare routine.
Then she thought:
"I'm already late. Why not take my time?"
After her skincare, she put on her school uniform, combed her hair into a neat bun with a scrunchie, laid her edges, and added a little bow.
"Cutie," she squealed at her reflection.
She grabbed her school bag and packed her books and supplies. She was just about to zip it up when screaming erupted from the living room. Her parents had started again.
"Urgh."
She reached for her headphones. Music had always been her solace, her way of escaping reality, of zoning out. It always had been, and it always would be.
"What would I do without music?" she always asked herself.
She put on her headphones, connected them to her phone, and let the music pour in. That, at least, muffled the noise.
She pulled out her writing journal, the thick notebook where she poured every piece of herself, took her pen, and sat down.
She closed her eyes, searching for inspiration. Then she opened them, brow furrowed. Even through the headphones, she could still hear her parents. Things had escalated. Something shattered.
She exhaled slowly and opened her journal.
Poems from the Heart
Love is such a dumb thing.
Maybe because of all the things
I've experienced.
But —
Why do we have to love?
My parents were once in love,
But then —
Can it be called love
If it's going to end?
No.
They were never in love.
I believe love to be a very pure feeling.
A magical one, at that.
I've never felt love.
Do I hope to?
Yes, I do.
I see so many people with their parents —
So in love.
A happy family.
And I smile, wishing mine was like that.
At the very least.
Oh, what I would sacrifice to have that.
Anyways —
Love is a dumb thing.
But I still wish to feel it.
And I want mine
To last
Forever.
A tear slipped from Lilith's eye as she drew a small heart beside the word
"Forever" in red pen.
"Ding, ding, ding."
"7:40 AM."
Lilith looked at the clock, silenced it and put it into her bag. She then tucked the journal and pen into her bag, the last thing she wanted was for anyone to find that book. Her parents rarely came into her room, but people were unpredictable.
She came out of her room and walked into the living room. Her eyes met her parents'. As usual, she would simply say "Good morning" and walk out.
"Good morning."
She started toward the door when her father's voice stopped her.
"What's so good about the morning, Lilith?"
"And this is the first time you've ever been late to school," her mother added.
Lilith turned slowly.
"Well, nothing is good about this morning, Father. Honestly, nothing is good about this day. And Mum —" she glanced at the cigarette in her father's mouth and the bottle in her mother's hand.
"You could have woken me up early instead of arguing all the time. And please stop smoking and drinking. It's unhealthy."
She turned, walked out, and slammed the door behind her. Then she hopped on her bicycle and rode to school.