First 500: My Heart is the Tempest by Sacha Rosel
WELCOME TO THE FIRST 500: My Heart is the Tempest EDITION, WHERE WE AT VRAEYDA LITERARY SHARE THE FIRST 500 WORDS OF OUR PUBLISHED WORKS.
BELOW IS THE FIRST 500 WORDS OF Sacha Rosel’s immersive Dark Fantasy Novel My Heart is the Tempest, CURRENTLY ON SALE AT THE VRAEYDA STORE AND WHEREVER NOVELS ARE SOLD.
Into Something Rich and Strange
She was a furious rage walking. Wherever Sycorax went, a flaring wind moved along with her, some obscure energy steaming off her whole body. Not the jolly frozen wind Niveal inhabitants were accustomed to, but different and disturbing, something which surely was malignant. It had to be, for it was as hot as the strange airs and fires mentioned in tales of imaginary places, fabrications of the mind where alien shades spelled “crimson” and “coal” haunted people with their scourge and snow and ice didn’t exist.
Pearlescent clarity was all to see in the real world. One never found anything but ice, snow and rocks layer upon layer, in a mirror-like truth. Since the beginning of time, when the Lady of Snow, Neve, was impregnated with white flakes by strikes of thunder and lightning, giving birth to the first immaculate beings, life was pure whiteness shining endlessly.
Their appearance proved it: white crystal pupils, snow icy hair, alabaster skin, proudly boasting translucent butterfly wings once pupated into adulthood, all the rightful children of Niveal were born of snow and ice and relished in cold. No anomaly could live and prosper in their frozen truth.
Yet there she was, this odd Valley of Moss girl boiling all over, forcing an evil hot wind of weird tales into their lives. She had to be sick, she was sick. Sick without remedy. Sycko, they called her, spitting the word out with utter precision as if to wipe clean the shadow she cast on their path while walking.
Outsiders, those dark-haired Valley of Moss descendants were unmistakably barbarians, intruders creeping their way through the snowy crevices of the mountains, engulfing the sacred land in their steps made of tar. One day they would certainly be forced to leave and disappear in the black chasms of the unknown.
As supreme rulers of Niveal, the Council of the Bright eventually accepted their presence among the children of Neve, alas, because servants were needed to keep the land spotless. Naturally, those Valley of Moss frauds were the perfect candidates for such a heavy task, looking as strange as they did.
Their olive-skinned figures might spoil the view while crossing gates and bridges or walking through the Temple of Perennial Peace and Pristine Pool, but it was a small price to pay to make sure all corners of Niveal looked perfectly immaculate at all times.
Though no Nivealian would treat those oddities as equals, everyone kindly embraced the Council’s order and accepted the inferior beings as their guests, for the newcomers’ fate could one day be changed into banishment and, more importantly, none of them would show any sign of rebellion.
So, this Sycko girl could walk as furiously as she thought fit. She was not yet thirteen and still ignorant of the world; they could tolerate her strange ways, for they knew perfectly well she wouldn’t last much longer behaving in an erratic and untamed way.
Soon, she would bow down and accept the supremacy of Niveal laws, there was no other way to survive. Soon, all the words spitting from their mouths would cause her to break, spilling that ghastly wind out of her body and out of their precious land. Her steam would evaporate and vanish like a dying breath, replaced by the safe and solid sound of snow.
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