The figures laughed - their mockery piercing my heart - but what hurt the most was when I looked up once again.
There were my parents, watching the scene below them, but not a hint of remorse flickered within their eyes.
My mother looked down at me with pity, as if this were all my fault and there was nothing she could do. My father looked down at me with disgust, like I was now a creature of the forest and not his child and future heir.
Their rejection left me as bare as I felt without my wings of glory, and when I returned my gaze to lock on the culprits of my broken body, they're gone.
"Wings..." I croak the word.
My trembling hand reaches forward, the remaining black feathers I adored rained down around my fingers. The sight seemed to shatter something inside me, but I fought to remain in control.
I...can still live. I...I need Mother and Father. They have to help me. I'm their child.
I sought their comfort, my begging jewels returning up to them. I ignored their expressions that held so much hate. Those eyes that should have shown some sort of remorse for what had happened to me.
"Please?" My voice was like the squeak of a mouse, tiny and high-pitched. I knew they could hear me, and for a moment, I thought my father would lower.
He tried...
Mother's hand grasped his arm, and I saw her anger that was directed down to me.
"She's useless now. She can't become our heir. We'll have another child. Start anew. Leave her."
I didn't understand how her words reached me, but the already shattered pieces within me seemed to break further until I was sure there had to be nothing left of me.
"W...why?" My knees buckled then - a questionable predicament as to how I'd lasted standing for so long in the first place. Maybe I'd gotten back up in hopes I could rise above all of this, but now that the soft earth cushioned my formidable plunge, that speck of hope was nothing but thin air.
"What did I do?" My words were soft and yet they had to reach their ears as my father flinched and tried to fight against my mother's hold. She held onto him like it was now life or death, and it only made me want more answers.
"What did I do?!" I screamed this time, and shaky hands turned into fists as my eyes stung and the pain pulsing through me grew.
"You'll abandon me?! I tried! Worked endlessly to be a good daughter! Listened to every request! I studied as hard as I could. Why aren't you protecting me? Why are you leaving me?!"
My throat grew tight as tears rolled down my cheeks.
"It hurts!" I screamed. "Why...why! Don't...leave me! Don't abandon me! Mother! Father!"
My father's eyes blurred with tears, but my mother gritted her teeth and tugged him back. "Let us go."
"Lera! We can't just aba-"
"She's NOTHING!" Her words were as cold as ice - daggers that stabbed into my heart and left me staring up in shock.
Mother noticed my jaw-dropped expression, tears still streaming down my face.
"We can't have a wingless heir. You can't be of any use to either of us. We can create another. Someone stronger. Let the wolves of these parts eat you. Then your shackled life will be over. Your destiny of running is over. Just submit to the darkness and die!"
Was this why I worked so hard? The endless, hard lessons of vocabulary, knowledge of our kind and others, the wisdom from elders of our past Nephilims before they perished by their own shackled deaths, and my childhood seized by the very parents who were supposed to love me.
Was the supernatural world always this cruel?
"Enough, Lera! Undo this spell this instant!"
"I will not," she declared with her emotionless voice. "She's disowned from us. You can punish me later on when we're safe."
I bit my lip hard - so hard that blood seeped into my mouth as my whole body shook violently. My head fell to the ground, the shame of being a wingless, broken orphan beginning to take over my mind and make me realize just how alone I truly was.
Those who once played with me way back when are now dead.
Our community on the verge of extinction.
My parents disowned me.
I'm left here...for death.
Death...
I don't deserve death, do I?
I'm only ten. Ten...years old. Why? Why? WHY!
The pain of all of this was too much to bear, and yet I couldn't dare close my eyes and let the darkness take me permanently if it meant my parents - that woman who should have been my mother - returned to their life on the run and brought another into this world.
They won't dare do such a thing.
I fought to rise up on my feet, overcome with a sensation that I'd never endured before. My head lifted up to the sky, until my eyes locked onto the very woman who was now my enemy.
The villain of my current predicament.
The way I looked at her left her in frozen shock, but my words were what made fear swarm her eyes as I declared it loud and clear for the world to hear.
For the universe to use against her for all eternity.
"You'll never conceive." My voice was emotionless, and the flow of words seemed out of my vocabulary. "Never again will you hear the cries of a baby of your own blood. You will be plagued to carry the burden of your decision this night, and let the universe be witness!"
"You wen-"
"YOU WILL NEVER CONCEIVE!" I screamed with so much force the trees around me shuttered and shook while the ground quaked with rage. "NEVER! Every drop of blood I've shed! Every feather I've lost. Let it condemn you to eternal suffering! Let death never touch you! Let everything you care for be stolen from your grasp! I, Celeste, declare it and so shall it be!"
Goosebumps crept through my body as a howl echoed through the forest around me. Foreign energy coursed through me, aching to make this woman feel a quarter - no, a pinch - of what I was experiencing.
The woman with long golden blonde hair and dark purple eyes was nothing to me, and my father with neon orange locks and lavender purple eyes like mine would carry the burden of my hate.
If I died within minutes if not hours of their departure, let my blood tie them like the very chains that imprisoned us to lives of solitude, for I did not ask to be born, raised, and left to perish.
My purpose was far above that, and thanks to them, the hopeful dream of freedom was ruined.
The pain in my father's eyes would haunt me if I even survived the remainder of the night, let alone the days ahead of me, but the sudden scream of pain that came from my mother was uncalled for.
Her wings looked as though they were cramping up, just like the rest of her body. Father looked between us as if confused about who he should save. It was obvious who he was going to choose, but in the end, he didn't have to.
Mother grabbed on to him with both hands, and with a blink, the two of them were gone from the air.
The cold breezed past at that moment, to confirm that I was now alone in this life from now on.
My lips trembled as I fell to my knees once again.
This time when I hit the ground, it was felt like every ounce of energy had been stolen from my being. The pain crept through every inch of my body as it grew hot and my world spun.
My stomach flipped, and I felt nauseous a second later, but I couldn't try and throw up. There was not enough energy for my body to respond in such a manner.
All I could do was allow my end to be easier as my eyes rolled back behind my head and I fell forward into the soil that was soaked with my very blood.