Aurora puffs the matte powder on the apple of her cheeks, smiling as a healthy glow of a blushing maiden camouflages her face. Her mascara coated eyes swoon at the image in front, a soft preening erupts in the silent room. Blonde curls akin to spun gold settled on her head like a cloud, brilliant azure eyes glimmering against a well lit mirror, weaving pretty lies.
"What a dazzling beauty, I am," she whispers to herself, pouting plump lips ever so slightly as if trying to seduce her mirrorself. A finger unintentionally twirls around one of her curls as she coyly makes eye contact with her mirrorself, chin tipping to her shoulder, speaking, "Oh, you mean the Duke has sent me a marriage proposal?"
A dainty hand with slender fingers presses against her lips and she giggles ever so slightly. A sound melodious enough to sell out theaters and live events. Eyes looking as innocent as a lamb, unbeknownst, being fed for slaughter.
"Well then, prithee, I must reject for I aspire to be the Empress!" She exclaims with a subdued haughtiness that one would miss if they did not squint to look at it.
The room was dark, if not for the LED wall mirror lighting up her dressing table with a faint glow of yellow and the palladian windows, adjacent to her dressing table, glowing to light, untimed, moments prior to some loud bolt of lightning striking somewhere afar.
The skies were rumbling with a malicious intent, as if avenging the mistreated by destroying the land its tormentors walked on. It made the crystal chandelier, attached to her roof, sway in a melody of its own unknown. A motion that remained unnoticed to her engaged senses as a small smile creases her lips, excited for tomorrow's headlines.
'HARPER PRODUCTIONS SOLD OUT EVEN WHEN THE GODS WERE RAGING!'
'SUNSHINE WITHIN THE STORM, AURORA HARPER GIVES US ANOTHER HIT SHOW!'
'AN INCOMPARABLE BEAUTY, QUOTES THE PRESIDENT FOR AURORA HARPER'S PERFORMANCE!'
The scent of drizzling rain kissing the dry walls of her theatre brought a romantic flutter to her stomach. A strange giddiness of her impending success.
She is Aurora Harper, a sensational theater artist at the mere age of twenty. In the digital age of movies and media, she single-handedly keeps the true spirit of theatre alive, vehemently refusing to act on the silver as well as golden screen.
Her gaze alone has sold out tickets in seconds, let aside when she sings she trends like there was no other important issue in the whole wide world than Aurora Harper opening her mouth. Memes belived that everything her vocal cords generated was pitch perfect. Her snores were Bohemian Rhapsody, sneezes an Elvis tune and probably farts, as the masses belived to be, a sonorus E-flat.
When she sighed #cheeruprora would trend. When she smiled #weloveyourora would trend.
Millions of people and their small worlds revolved around her just because she was beautiful. People loved her for the way she walked, for the way she talked, for the way she looked. Aurora was everyone's perfect person. She gave them what they wanted in exchange of their love and fed on it like an animal starved.
Aurora was a glutton for paychecks from parched eyes and lonely hearts wanting to play make-belief with her. Roleplaying with her face as their profile pictures. Crying for her when she said that she loved them, without knowing of their existence. Smiling with her when she credited them for some win.
Hers was a shallow existence in a win-win world.
KNOCK! KNOCK!
The door opens with a swoosh and Aurora eyes her assistant through the mirror, walking with strong, ambitious, strides. A clipboard pressed under her right arm and a pen fidgeting around the fingers of his left hand. A chunky pair of headphones was swallowing his neck as a whole and he looked like a ringed neck duck.
"The weather is bad," Aurora comments as a greeting.
The man visibly scoffs, "Are you concerned?"
Aurora smiles a pearly smile, swiveling in her chair to face the assistant now. "I wouldn't dare engage my emotions in such petty inconveniences, pfft." Her words are an obvious mockery to his observations.
"We're housefull," her assistant taps on his clipboard, presenting her a page filled with green check marks and signatures.
"Wouldn't expect any less from me," Aurora grins, standing up and letting the hem of her ruby dress fall freely to the floor. She indulged in an obvious hairflip, as proud as one could be.
"Have you memorised all of the lines and lyrics?"
"Oh please, has it ever mattered before?" Aurora counterquestions nonchalantly, walking up to her palladian windows and staring outside, fascinated with the blinking skies.
"Aurora! You cannot ad-lib your way through a sci-fi play! Your IQ is the size of a plastic ruler!" Her assistant whines condescendingly.
Aurora squirms her nose, turning away from the skies to face him with evident confusion, "Why do you know the size of a plastic scale?!" She questions, exasperated.
Her assistant's eyes widen in bafflement as he lets out a concerned scoff. "Even pre-schoolers know it!" He gesticulates, hands flailing in all directions.
Aurora frowns, before starting to defend her fragile ego. "That doesn't conclude anything. Pre-schoolers do not know the difference between an Opera and an Aria!"
"The size of a scale is seven centimetres," her assistant sighs out loud, giving up trying to make a point.
"Now do you expect me to Google how much that is in IQ or will you please convert it and tell me? Seven isn't all that bad, it is a lucky number but I'd like for it be one. Number one is the best, isn't it?" Aurora smiles dreamily.
Her assistant shakes his head, waddling in his spot like a duck, wondering if his employer was dumb or was it all an elaborate pretence. The world would never know.
"It, It, totally it," her assistant nods, slipping a hand in his pant pockets and pulling out his phone. "Ah! You're up in seven! Will you look at that? Be on standby please, I'll get going," he informs her, putting the pair of headphones over his ears, much to Aurora's dismay, and blocking out any further conversation.
"Fine," the blonde snarls to his retreating back, "I'll google it myself." She holds the trail of her dress in one hand and paces to her phone that was placed on her dresser top. Her green-room was silent again. She looked dazzling in the mirror and somewhere afar- something creaked.
Like a nail dragging against glass.
It makes her involuntarily grid her teeth. Just then, another stroke of lighting illuminates the skies, light almost blinding as it flashes through her windows. Aurora, caught off guard, looks away, guarding her face with her hands, but when the windows go dark, her green-room doesn't.
She spots a looming shadow overhead, out of the view of her mirror. Reluctantly, she cranes her neck up and screams when she finds the chandelier hanging off a thin chain, a mere centimetre above her face. One of its crystal shards waiting to pierce her eye.395Please respect copyright.PENANA1lgEEhIN5L
395Please respect copyright.PENANAJEGk7uviJS
And the moment comes when thunder follows his lit muse and finally strikes on her ears, resorting her to darkness.395Please respect copyright.PENANA7pLDurfCQw
395Please respect copyright.PENANAs5lHPFvvAQ
395Please respect copyright.PENANADmGtpbLQpw
Bubbles.395Please respect copyright.PENANAMZ8oAhIJZ7
395Please respect copyright.PENANAwXhNmqwpy1
395Please respect copyright.PENANAJa7Ke6rhJP
395Please respect copyright.PENANAHyRKPgBUbc
Searing like warm water against cold metal. 395Please respect copyright.PENANAITc8zHi1qJ
395Please respect copyright.PENANAN9EzDJybu9
395Please respect copyright.PENANALUqJODAkbQ
Burning, in her nose.395Please respect copyright.PENANA3Bjgl3Gojg
395Please respect copyright.PENANAGMOmMV7KqN
395Please respect copyright.PENANAJx7XT8nGaz
395Please respect copyright.PENANAjt0Jffg2Gg
A struggle to live as she feels herself choke.395Please respect copyright.PENANApr5620d8NR
395Please respect copyright.PENANAmbF1Cu2DUl
395Please respect copyright.PENANANhJT9q5fnV
Coughs, violent and dry, as if scratching her lungs against hay. 395Please respect copyright.PENANAO6edHW7VEl
395Please respect copyright.PENANA71kjFbqdd6
395Please respect copyright.PENANA851CYZ4YvW
Her neck jolts, as a force pulls her head up. 395Please respect copyright.PENANA7B4c2HXzdL
Her eyes burn when she forces them open to light. So much light. Ugh, was she dead? Was this heaven? Did she really make it to heaven nonetheless? With all that cleavage she used to show and bikini photoshoots she participated in because they were a fan favourite?
Did she really make it?! Did Sunday church and the monthly donations reall redeem her of all her sins?!
Was she a good person afterall?!
Does God really only cares about one's soul?!
She blinked her eyes as a smile fluttered to her lips. Her surroundings were abundantly lit with candle stands holding seven burning candles glittering like stars on a pallette. The walls were covered with tapestries of royal blue and dull gold. In front of her were three bejeweled thrones, somewhat like the props from when she had acted Macbeth, and on them sat three deities.
Was heaven plagiarizing Shakespearean sets now? How odd, she didn't believe Heaven to be stuck into a 16th century aesthetic. She had imagined it to be more — technologically advanced and well, cloudy. And harp oriented.
"Is she up?"
"Yes, Your Grace."
Her eyes squinted towards the sounds but before she could focus on anything, a hand reached out and grabbed her face, rubbing it with a rough cloth as if it were sandpaper against a discarded wall. What - the - actual - flippityfuck ?!
And, upon instinct, Aurora shrieked and swatted the intruder away.
"Excuse me, are you cleaning your 1909 bumper truck's pigeon-shat windshield?! For goodness' sake this skin is worth millions! Keep your slimy paws off me!" The former blonde snarls as firmly as she could.
But something felt odd.
It wasn't her powerful voice that came out. And the woman wasn't whimpering for the abhorrent deed she had committed. Heck, she didn't even look angel-esque.
Instead, what came out of her throat was a squeaking noise akin to a five-year-old's tantrum and the maid-looking-woman scowled at her like a mother whose child just suggested to drop out of school and start twitch streaming to make a living.
"Shut up and start confessing, you haybrain!" The woman jerked the towel on Aurora's head, thrice, before the girl started screamed again. Why was she being flogged in heaven?! Wasn't heaven supposed to mean that she made it for good?! Absolute freedom- where are you?!
"Stop it! Andrew! Where are you?! There is a mad woman on set—" her words dried out when her eyes finally refocused to the strange crowd she was standing amongst.
They were not luminescent like heavenly beings as fabled back on Earth. Heck they looked plain, quite ordinary, and stuck back in the renaissance era. Double Heck, the people on the thrones were not deities whose features she couldn't figure out prior, curtsy her burning eyes, but they were just creatures of God-like beauty. Aurora's jaw hung in awe as she admired the pink haired woman sitting on the throne, looking as regal as all of Aurora's dreams and wishes. Her eyes glimmering a soft silver as she coughed ever so gently.
Ah so beautiful!!
Beside her was a bearded man, with soft brown hair, quite her age, who rubbed her back while395Please respect copyright.PENANAHfmPLlDBpd
395Please respect copyright.PENANAkZdD3SageP
whispering something in the woman's ear. His jaw was sharp, his features were dazzling and eyes a brilliant emerald - as if straight out of pinterest.
Aurora resisted to drool all over herself.
Beside them, on the smallest throne, was a small boy - looking around five to six years in age - as he swung his feet to-and-fro, big cyan eyes piercing through her soul and an excited smile directed toward her...?
Aurora looked left and right as murmurs rose, triple heck was the strange reflection that was cast in the bucket of water sitting before her.
It was of an odd girl. Quite plain, if bluntly put.
Chalky black hair stuck to a wide forehead housing bushy black eyebrows and the saddest brown of eyes one could ever witness back on Earth. The brown, sunken eyes that expelled students or drug addicts have.
Aurora tilted her head in confusion and so did the person in the water. Aurora's eyes widened and so did the person in the water's. She was small, quite around four or five years, with chubby cheeks and thin lips. Aurora opened her mouth and the person in the water did to.
Horror settled in her eyes like free real estate as a sinking sense of realisation weighed her down to the marbled ground. She looked up to a gold embellished ceiling with floral patterns and coloured glass and hanging chandeliers glowing like stars.
If she was dead— where the fuck was she now?!
Where the fuck had her soul teleported to?!
Who the fuck was the person in the water?!
"Iris Bernadette! Confess to your crimes right now! Did you steal her highness, duchess Arabella's necklace?!"
Crimes? Duchess Arabella? Necklace?!
As if being plain wasn't a death sentence on its own- she was a thief too?! 395Please respect copyright.PENANASRlly8XV0o
395Please respect copyright.PENANAFTQE59T1pG
395Please respect copyright.PENANAGrNSQWIc52
395Please respect copyright.PENANA6PM3RaGmzN
395Please respect copyright.PENANA8LyfIkOheR
395Please respect copyright.PENANAw0xCXohqo2
395Please respect copyright.PENANANCmF7AsiTI
395Please respect copyright.PENANASoMcDQuS40
395Please respect copyright.PENANARlLnevSkIV
395Please respect copyright.PENANAGVNg1IvSD7
395Please respect copyright.PENANAGVZjbA3LZf
395Please respect copyright.PENANAVjeWhaES6O
395Please respect copyright.PENANA1KeQ5ouKBl
395Please respect copyright.PENANAmPZE0HtPuE
395Please respect copyright.PENANA19DigMLZMB
395Please respect copyright.PENANAs5sFxlsXYY
395Please respect copyright.PENANAF2rl76V3ni
395Please respect copyright.PENANAYLy7C6XxgY
395Please respect copyright.PENANA1PAiJhJBNO
395Please respect copyright.PENANARZtjgc29Ep
395Please respect copyright.PENANAARVEZPDR7e
395Please respect copyright.PENANAFexfqRUhgT
395Please respect copyright.PENANAFl0IynhA5n
395Please respect copyright.PENANA5y5I3I3ICW
395Please respect copyright.PENANARQ8znP2n1u
395Please respect copyright.PENANABbcuZZtQUo
395Please respect copyright.PENANAs8qZYLwT4g
395Please respect copyright.PENANA3iPzc9uxSl
395Please respect copyright.PENANAoaExH1b8HS
395Please respect copyright.PENANAqavUalTsN9
395Please respect copyright.PENANA5YeQoAGjfc
395Please respect copyright.PENANAhBfgeNX28u
395Please respect copyright.PENANAjOMHmlbXzQ
395Please respect copyright.PENANAjBG49LY0AJ
395Please respect copyright.PENANAgHsFmlzFDW
395Please respect copyright.PENANAJd8ed7TO8g
395Please respect copyright.PENANAedJfyqkFIh
395Please respect copyright.PENANAiNcPOtxYU0
395Please respect copyright.PENANAfxOn1U4Q2a
395Please respect copyright.PENANA1zP6kKdv9s
395Please respect copyright.PENANALjceou1Ygk
395Please respect copyright.PENANAkp6e3SHyyp
395Please respect copyright.PENANAgUyKine4LK
395Please respect copyright.PENANAchUIhvhs8d
395Please respect copyright.PENANAdAfvQihmWN
395Please respect copyright.PENANAvY3i6XELXD
395Please respect copyright.PENANAr4PaQbDTQv
395Please respect copyright.PENANACVO3hGpjDh
395Please respect copyright.PENANAT1qSO92436
395Please respect copyright.PENANAu6iEVlsfh1
395Please respect copyright.PENANAOLgHIG4ghq
395Please respect copyright.PENANAFqeJQkjX19
395Please respect copyright.PENANAXn0secxZi4
395Please respect copyright.PENANAdEuZ32G1Rq
395Please respect copyright.PENANAgIasQsrfpo
395Please respect copyright.PENANA2RM82FO2c0
395Please respect copyright.PENANAi8zcpy9fVd
395Please respect copyright.PENANA7GUR2s7g9P
395Please respect copyright.PENANAWdhTiMsUkL
395Please respect copyright.PENANAxgiIhd9MnK
395Please respect copyright.PENANAPVq7TVJrM6
395Please respect copyright.PENANAlgRZfdhzy2
395Please respect copyright.PENANAHYel9Re5iZ
395Please respect copyright.PENANAlgAqSYlsib
395Please respect copyright.PENANAskSYa3S7sY
395Please respect copyright.PENANAc5uBA7xTYc
395Please respect copyright.PENANAJ9RTEGwBEA
395Please respect copyright.PENANA1vbrDMszvo
395Please respect copyright.PENANAO2PEXh65ky
395Please respect copyright.PENANAxhtzOIMQyM
395Please respect copyright.PENANABz1dng5KdK
395Please respect copyright.PENANAwBli94WpZa
395Please respect copyright.PENANAZJmmeb4SfB
395Please respect copyright.PENANAePnEO2LqcL
395Please respect copyright.PENANA1wLHxbhSWP
395Please respect copyright.PENANAHVP5JMs6Vl
395Please respect copyright.PENANAPHtHfB7SIL
395Please respect copyright.PENANAUxCe49wUVY
395Please respect copyright.PENANANpgwB88ERP