Contents
STARLIGHT
Content Warning
Pronunciation Guide
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Acknowledgements
STARLIGHT
THE STARLIGHT TRILOGY
Book One
Lauren Jade Case
Copyright © 2021 Lauren Jade Case
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address the publisher.
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-9168887-0-8
Portions of this book are works of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Front cover image and design by Gabrielle Ragusi
Book design/ interior by Evenstar Books LTD
First printing, 2021.
This is for you, Dad.
Thank you for sharing your love of stories.
I know you’re proud.
Content Warning
My intent with this book and this story is never to harm and I don’t want to risk someone’s health by not disclosing that which may cause such things. While some triggers may appear in one chapter, in one line, in large or small quantities, I never want or mean to hurt another person. And while warnings aren’t required, I don’t want to compromise anyone with anything. Below is a list of what the following book does contain and so now please be aware that these things are present in the story of STARLIGHT to some degree.
This book contains the following content warnings:
Adult language
Injuries/ injury detail
Blood/ Gore
Torture
Violence
Pregnancy
Anxiety
Scenes of a sexual nature
Death
Imprisonment
Pronunciation Guide
I’ve always loved seeing little pronunciation guides in books I’ve read, especially if there are difficult names or places to learn throughout them. This is my version. Obviously, as these books go on, you will come across more and more Monster types, so the list will keep expanding, but for now:
Welcome to STARLIGHT MONSTER PRONUNCIATIONS 101.
Scorpio – Scor-Pee-Oh
Calefaction – Kale-fack-shun
Jij – Jih-j
Kifflegger – K-iff-leg-er
Poena – P-oh-nah
Mitter – Mih-ter
Shadow – Shah-doh
Siltapolia — Sil-tah-poh-lee-ah
Prologue
There once was a Being, a Being of nothingness; no light or dark, no matter or time, no life or death. It was a lonely existence.
So they created.
Out of their hands came life and light, death and dark. Time began and matter spawned.
And six Gods, with a seventh to follow, were breathed into being.
But with their existence, something else followed too. As if the world needed an equal, a balance.
So with the Gods came Monsters. Things with no souls that wanted nothing more than to destroy what the Gods attempted to build. But they were separated by Veils – walls in existence itself keeping Earth and Heavens away from other lands and the Hells. It’s said, at the very beginning of time, those walls began to break and crack, allowing some Monsters to squeeze through from their side to another. And with time, those cracks grew, and so more came.
No one knew why, but the Gods couldn’t rid the world of Monsters. Some say it was because they were equal. All they knew was that they came.
The Gods searched for answers until they found one. They could merge with Humans and create their own kind of species. Those special enough became Creatures and they could ruin the Monsters with their newfound powers and ability.
It would be an endless fight, a war, the Gods and the Being knew, but it needed fighting for all souls were worthy of life. And so the Creatures would pass down these gifts through the generations, trying to rid the world of Monsters and give life to those who deserved it until one side emerged victorious.
This destiny wasn’t chosen by them. It was chosen for them.
And so, from the Being’s loneliness, there came Creatures and Monsters and a great balance that may one day shift all worlds forever.
1
A Special Birthday
“Happy Birthday dear, Natalia. Happy birthday to you.”
Natalia blew out the candles on the cake her dad held. As she smiled at him, the lights cut out. She blinked into the darkness.
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said.
She heard her dad shuffle out of her room and moved once he was gone. She searched for some clothes on the floor and hoped they were the right way round when she found some. February mornings were still dark – truthfully, most of the day was – so hardly any light came through the window to see with as a guide.
She dressed anyway and hurried downstairs.
Rain and wind howled beyond the front door. Natalia braced herself and stepped into the deluge to reach the little electrical cupboard attached to the side of the outside of the house.
Yellow light flashed when she pulled the cord. She shivered when a spider ran across a wire in front of her and sighed when it disappeared into the brickwork.
It was an old house so lights going out or electrics tripping wasn’t unusual. But as she searched the board, she was stumped.
Nothing has tripped.
For good measure, she flicked some switches before turning off the light and retreating, leaving the spiders and their silky webs behind – two things she didn’t care for.
Instantly, the wind slapped thick droplets across her cheeks. Shielding her face with an arm, Natalia turned to the front door.
As she did, movement shot by in the reflection of the glass and she froze.
Spinning with little grace belonging to a former dancer, her gaze spotted a wolf.
What?
How could there be a wolf? No wolves existed on this island – there were no woods for them to live and no zoos for them to have escaped from. It must’ve been a dog. Nevertheless, Natalia stepped into the rain, eyes searching for answers to whatever she’d seen.
Blinking, she spotted a brown shape running away.
Definitely a dog. It probably escaped from someone’s house or garden, she thought as thunder rolled across the sky. Only it didn’t sound right. Normal thunder had a resonating crack. This sounded like a snappy firework.
“Get back inside!”
Natalia wiped her eyes in time to see three people blast past her. They sprinted in the same direction as the dog. Were they warning her that the animal was dangerous?
Whoever had shouted and whatever their meaning, the warning of something was clear.
Another chest-rattling noise burst through the air. This time, Natalia was entirely convinced it wasn’t thunder. She turned toward the sound, heart pulsing with ominous dread.
Distinguished billows of black smoke rose into the unclear sky.
The smoke wafted closer and closer as a shape emerged from the far end of the street. One that was unmistakable. A scorpion. But this wasn’t one that could be crushed under a foot. This insect was at least double the height of a person. Natalia choked on her own saliva, her body shuddering. She tried to back up yet her legs w
ouldn’t cooperate, paralysed with hopeless fear.
Out of nowhere, the brown ‘dog’ returned, barrelling past Natalia, directly for that giant thing.
The dog leaped suddenly and Natalia looked for why.
Blood had pooled in the street, leaking towards a drain. Blood from a body that was cleanly snapped in half.
The lower abdomen was down the road a few paces, legs dangling from the path. The top half was closer to Natalia, just in front of her dad’s crappy car, but close enough that she could see the wide, lifeless eyes.
Natalia’s legs unfroze and she darted toward the front door.
Whatever was happening, it had to be in her head. She was dreaming, her brain not yet awake to comprehend reality and had instead offered a nightmare.
She reached the door, her back pressed against it as the rain continued its assault. Still she couldn’t turn away or wake.
Three figures sprinted back down the road, paces behind the wolf-dog – Natalia was convinced they were the same ones. If they looked at her, she hadn’t noticed; she was too focused on the giant bug as it snapped its massive pincer.
That was the noise!
A lump formed in her throat. Fear either gave the ability to fight or to run. Natalia was unable to do either – a heart solid with fear and wonder was a potent mix apparently.
Natalia’s field of vision grew wider the closer the figures got to the giant scorpion. One of them broke away, brown hair whipping about their faces, while the others disappeared into a pillar of smoke.
Their stare was direct as they lifted their arms and Natalia cowered in panic.
When she lifted her gaze once more, all was gone. No one was running about. There wasn’t a giant scorpion snapping somewhere at the distant end of the street. There wasn’t even a dog. All that remained was the storm.
The dream had ended. She was awake. She had to be.
Unease settled into her stomach as she stepped inside, and she blinked in confusion, unable to shake the feeling she was walking away from something important.
The smell of strawberries wafted up her nose, chasing away most of her thoughts. She followed it to the kitchen where her father was bent over the small table, cutting her birthday cake into near equal sized sections, just as he always would.
Natalia sat at her usual spot, tucked into the corner of the small room. She put her hands shaking hand on the table for only a moment before squirrelling them onto her lap. Her dad didn’t seem to notice as he passed her a china bowl, took one for himself, and sat opposite with a toothy smile.
“Happy birthday,” he chimed, green eyes blazing. The lights above him were on, yellow and soft, like they’d never been out for even a second.
Natalia tried to smile. “Thanks, Dad.”
Is the wolf-dog still out there? The body? The scorpion?
The intrusive thoughts made her choke on her first bite, earning a raised eyebrow, but she played it off as a cough.
Of course they’re not out there. There never was a wolf. There wasn’t a scorpion. And there wasn’t a body.
Yet the thoughts didn’t leave, no matter how hard she tried replacing them with cake.
In another attempt at distraction, she watched her father.
They shared a lot of features. The same tree-bark brown hair which they wore unstyled; Natalia’s fell to her elbows with a side parting, while her father’s was much shorter, greying at the roots already. The pale complexion, oblong face, small nose, and the dark eyebrows and eyelashes.
Natalia’s eyes were the same almond shape as her father’s, but hers were a dull brown and his a calm green. She’d never worn braces for her straight teeth while he had wonky teeth he was unbothered by.
Between her shoulder blades began to itch as she thought about the oddest difference. Sometimes, when she became flustered or blushed, a subtle sparkle rose on her cheeks. It didn’t happen every time, and Natalia didn’t think others noticed it when it did. If they did, nobody had mentioned it. She herself had assumed it was residue glitter from something – probably from all the cake decorating she did regularly.
“Did Katherine make this?” She stabbed the last piece of her icing and saw the design on it: intricately small flowers made of tiny dots.
He winked. “Of course she did.”
Katherine Santos was their overly cheerful neighbour who owned her own café and cake shop along Main Street. Natalia now worked there too, cooking and baking and cleaning.
She sighed, her gaze drawn to the window and the storm outside.
She caught a hint of her father’s voice as it trailed off. She blinked and looked back at him. “What?”
He smiled. “Something’s caught your attention.”
Wolf. Giant Scorpion. A trio. Dead body.
“It’s nothing. Just think about a dream I had.” She paused, her stomach twisting. “What were you saying?”
“I was saying,” he pushed his bowl away, “that your birthday comes round quicker every year.”
“It’s the same time every year, Dad. It’s just that we’re always so busy it seems to come round faster.”
“Can’t you stop growing up for one year?”
At that, she relaxed and smiled. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Then I suppose,” he emphasised the word dramatically, “I better give you these.”
From under the table, he drew out two presents wrapped in silver paper. Natalia became an impatient child, no longer distracted, wanting to grab her gifts. She did just that and her father chuckled.
Ignoring how her hands still shook, she tore into the smaller present first.
Inside a black box sat a sight of wonders. Two silver stars, hanging off short hooks, glistened with a hint of something that resembled the essence of starlight itself. Her mouth opened in awe. For months she’d asked for these earrings. She’d been drawn to them from the very first moment she’d seen them. How had her dad afforded them?
Her fingers glided over them and then picked them out. Carefully, she pushed the first into one ear and then the second on the other side. The stars hung just below her lobe. They caused little rainbows to dance on the walls as the lights caressed them.
“Dad…” She trailed off, unable to finish. She touched the earrings. They were hers.
His smile was a proud one. “You have another present,” he reminded, pointing at it.
With a thumping heart, Natalia wondered if she could handle a second present. These earrings were more than enough. They were everything. Knowing her father would only push until she relented though, she grabbed the second gift.
“They’re from Katherine too,” he said. “She wanted to get you something and remembered me saying about your headphones.”
“Dad.” She touched the box of her new green headphones. “This is too much.”
He climbed from his chair to kiss Natalia’s head. “Nothing is too much for my Natalia.”
“How—”
“I’ve been saving. It’s why you didn’t get much at Christmas.”
Natalia kissed his soft, shaven cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. But no amount of thanks, whether said or showed, would ever come close to expressing how truly grateful she was.
The doorbell rang and her dad left to get it, knees cracking as he moved. Natalia stayed. She didn’t dare blink in case her incredible gifts puffed out of existence. Were they taunts, things in front of her, in reach now, but things she would never really possess? They were too incredible and yet she’d been given them.
“Guess who?” Teased an overly familiar voice, drawing her back.
Noah entered, flashing a wide smile to show off his coloured braces. His neatly-cropped black hair showed off his ears – one ear was missing a chunk at the top thanks to an infected piercing from a couple of years ago. The kitchen lights gave his umber skin a golden sheen.
Natalia stood and Noah enveloped her in a secure hug. She caught her father’s eye over Noah’s back. He winked �
� his way of offering encouragement – and walked off.
“I heard it was someone’s eighteenth birthday.” Breaking apart, Noah thrusted a brown papered package at Natalia. “The birthday Fairies might have left something for you at my place.”
“There’s no such thing,” she argued as something niggled at her stomach.
“Today is your birthday, right?”
“It’s February nineteenth, right?”
Noah snorted as he laughed. “Then there must be such things. Come on, Princess. You’ve turned eighteen, not one hundred. There’s still enough life in you to joke around.”
“But what if they’re bad?”
He fake gasped. “I’m offended. I’m cancelling our friendship.”
She grinned. “That’s the fourth time this week.”
“Only the fourth?” Noah laughed at himself as Natalia unwrapped her present.
Long ago, Natalia had grown out of believing stories about Fairies and Witches and the rest; they belonged to the worlds inside her books, the ones now collecting dust in the loft. The idea of them was nice but silly now, and childish. They were a children’s wish, not an adult’s reality. Maybe that was why her brain had conjured what it had earlier, to hold onto what innocence it could. But Natalia was eighteen now and had to put those things away for good. Though she wasn’t old, she was old enough.
A brown box was hidden inside the brown paper package. She tore off the tape and beamed.
On the top was a giant box of Malteasers – her favourite. Putting them on the table as Noah slid into a chair, she found the second gift. She laid down the box to unfurl the piece of clothing, laughing as she held it up.
It was black with writing made from sequins that, when shook, flipped to a rainbow pattern. No matter the way the sequins hung, the writing remained the same: I’m a Fairy, bitch.
Starlight Page 1
