《o n e》

" THERE ONCE WAS a story told, long, long ago, about the sun and the moon falling in love with each other. The great, smoldering sun who shone so brightly, giving light and laughter to all of the universe, fell deeply in love with the grey, mysterious moon the second he saw her mid-orbit around Earth. And when she saw him, the moon also fell deeply in love, as it was love at first sight.

"But they could never be together, as the sun would have to stay out during the day and move away to let the moon breathe during the night. But there was one small hour at noon that the sun and the moon got to be together. She would hover above in the sky and watch the sun do his job. They grew closer, sinking even deeper into their love for one another, when one day the sun fed the moon a devious plan; he wanted them to run away from the universe and float off to some other place where they could always be together. But the moon was skeptical, as the idea of this saddened her, thinking about what would happen if the sun's light and warmth and fire suddenly burnt out from his absence and none of the planets would have light or warmth. Life would be eliminated.

"And so, even though it broke her heart into a million shards, she gave the sun a loving, sorrow-filled gaze and told him, 'don't you ever trade your magnificent light for my darkness. The people need you to see and breathe and laugh. All that I give them is a pane of light to see through during the night. You are far more beautiful and needed than I can ever even imagine being. I love you more than my own life, but I don't believe it is meant to be.'

"The sun was heartbroken, but accepted the moon's decision. He loved her, too, more than his life and so, that is how they stayed. Two masses, doing their jobs and shuffling through the days with ease. But without much joy, you see, as the true source of their joy only lay a few million miles away... just a little too far away to touch..." a small smile whisped along your lips as you gazed down at the yellowing pages of the storybook. You ran your trembling finger along the last sentence, fresh tears beginning to prickle behind your eyes. Just reading a book was a delicacy to you, as it was one of the only privileges you got to experience what life was like outside the bird cage. But just glancing at its hard cover brought back the unbearable longing to break away from this torture that you've dealt with and be free at last.

You looked down at your talking companion, a young unicorn named Sparrow you had found and befriended when you were just a young toddler. She had her melancholy grey eyes closed in sleep and was resting her chin gently on your lap. Sparrow had grown up since her filly stage, and was now a strong, yet feminine teen, her snow white coat glistening in the sun. Just looking at her peaceful state as she slept helped you to forget for just a mere moment about the situation that the two of you had been in for ten years.

You shifted roughly on the metal, attempting to get comfortable as you leaned back against the chilly bars of your cage, but your attempts prevailed to ease your mind. Sighing, you closed the story book with forever trembling hands and set it down gently next to you, running a shaking hand through Sparrow's soft white mane. Tilting your head up, you gazed longingly out of the barring at the top of the cage, watching the bright, cheerful clouds as they rolled by, playing tag in the sky. There was a slight breeze that gently swayed your hair, attempting to style it in a way that only it understood as birds sang quietly somewhere nearby.

But sadly, even the sounds of nature brought back the longing to be free. Every little thing made you want to make your Great Escape. Zeref had attempted to decorate your cage to your liking with the necessities; a prickly pillow made out of twigs lay down in one little open spot for you to sleep in, a small box for you to keep the one book a year Zeref brought to you (usually they were history of evil sorcery books, but depending on your behavior, you got story books). There was a small vanity with a mirror no larger than the size of your palm and a hairbrush made of sticks along with other toiletries. There was also a large bar hanging from the top of the cage that you were allowed to fly up to, but you had not been able to master your bird transformation yet. Other than that, the rest of the cage was left empty for your daily trainings, which you dreaded.

Zeref hadn't left you a clock or a calendar or anything of the sort for you to tell what day it was. Because of this, you couldn't even remember what day was your birthday or what month it was. You could only guess by the weather, as the winters were brutal on you without warm clothing (You were forced to wear the same set of clothes for a whole year, getting a new pair a size up from Zeref) and the position of the setting sun when Zeref materialized in your cage for your training.

When he had first brought you here, you and Sparrow had attempted to keep track of the days by Sparrow scratching tallies on the floor, but after you reached 2,364 you stopped counting...

Meals were delivered every day, only once in the middle of the day. It was usually bread and water for you and some hay or grass for Sparrow. The hunger pains you two had experienced were almost unbearable, but no matter how many times the two of you pleaded and begged for food, Zeref appeared to be nowhere in sight. Eventually, you both adapted to the pain and your bodies adjusted enough to withstand the waiting and the lack of nutrients.

But even after the two of you had finally given up calling out for help or begging Zeref to release you both only to get strangled or beat up or manipulated by magic (on your fifth attempt at trying to convince him to let you go, he picked you up with his magic and spun you around the cage with his telekenisis so fast that you were beyond dizzy and had to promise him you would never double cross him), the only company you ever had was from Sparrow. And while you loved your unicorn to death, you longed for an actual person to talk to or to at least look upon the faces of your family once more.

Thankfully, the loneliness was only at its worse for the first half of the day until Zeref arrived with either a meal or to begin the training for the day. Now, the training sessions is where it gets interesting.

You had been forced to read up on evil history, and had been taught about some of the greatest villains and sorcerers known to Fiore, but Zeref had decided to begin magic combat before he had even taught you how to master your Peculiar.

But, then again, he was not a Peculiar. He did not know how much power you truly possessed, he only thought he knew how much you possessed.

However, what use is that power if you do not know how to use it? Because of this, you lost every combat to Zeref every single day, leading up to today. He would shout insults at you as you attempted to perform whatever attack you could think of, but his cruel tongue and hateful words and namecalling caused you to lose focus and you ended up getting hit and hurt and bruised. Multiple times you developed concussions that lasted for multiple weeks, with Sparrow using her healing magic in an attempt to heal you quicker. When you got hit and lost, Zeref would take his anger out on you a second time, saying that you failed him.

That you would never become who you were meant to be.

That you were stupid.

That you were useless.

That you would never find happiness.

That you would never escape.

He was wrong.

♡♡♡

A couple of hours later, you and Sparrow sat quietly together, eating your only meal of the day while listening to the happy sounds of nature around you. The silence was comfortable, but was nevertheless full of the constant longing to bring up the forbidden subject that Zeref had threatened them never to speak of. The one time he caught them talking about it, he tied Sparrow to the top of the bird cage by her neck and threatened to hang her if they ever spoke of the subject again.

But now, you were eighteen. You were much more slyer and smarter and quicker than he estimated. Despite being locked away from the world, you had been developing hypothesises with a pencil that you had been able to create with a bit of one of your new unlocked powers, Peculiar Maker Magic and you wrote them on the empty pages in the back of the books you received. You wrote about things you thought the world would be like, but most of the books were covered in your theories about your powers and how best to use them in an attempt to escape this torture chamber. Despite all his nonsense of evil and malicious deeds that he tried to fill into your head for the past ten years, you denied everything in secret, but pretended like you understood around him.

Now, you softly chewed the stale bread as you let out a small cough to get Sparrow's attention, as she had a longing glazed look over her eyes. At the sound of your cough, she turned her head back to you, suddenly alert. She hadn't touched any of her food, as depression had been starting to get to her.

"We need to talk about it." You whispered to her after you had swallowed.

Sparrow's grey eyes went wide in shock as she quickly scanned the area before leaning in closer to you. "N/n (nickname), I would rather not get nearly strangled to death..."

You looked down at the metal floor and nodded slowly, understanding her worriment completely. But you had a plan. A plan that you knew had a highly probability of success to get the two of you out of here so you could find some place to stay and possibly join a guild. Your original plan had been to go home, but when Zeref told you that your parents had gotten taken over by their Peculiar magic and killed everyone in the household, including each other, that plan soon died.

"I know, I don't want you to either, but Spar, I have a formulated plan here in that storybook that I think might actually help break us out of here." You whispered, a small hint of hopefullness shining through in your voice.

Sparrow narrowed her eyes slightly. "I trust you completely, N/n, but I don't want you to get your hopes up too high. We've tried before and it never ends well..." she whispered, looking down at a long scar that went from her flank all the way to her left ankle. "We've been here for many years, I can sense it. I'm ready to leave more than anything, but..."

You nodded your head quickly in reassurance. "I understand completely. I mean, we don't even know how old we are, Spar! Don't you think it's time we actually got out of here?"

She raised a white eyebrow at you. "How are we going to do it?"

You scrambled over to your chest and pulled out the storybook about the sun and the moon, flipping all the way to the back with your pencil markings scribbled all over it. You turned the book around so Sparrow could see and quietly explained your plan to her, trying to make it seem like you were explaining the story in the book to her in case eyes were watching.

"After I carefully recorded and hypothesized all of the potential uses for each of my powers, the ones that we know anyway, I formulated a plan that I think will be perfect for getting us out of here. After we escape, I'll transform into my peregrine form and you can use your horn to levitate yourself and we can fly out over the plains until we find civilization. If I haven't been able to pull of the peregrine form by then, we can just walk. Since our family is gone, the only source of hope we really have is joining a guild. It'll be incredibly difficult, since we can't exactly lie about my magic, but I read once about a guild called Fairy Tail that was told to be welcoming in anyone with magical abilities. We could try to join there?"

For once, Sparrow's eyes had a faint glimmer of something you hadn't seen in her grey orbs for a very long time. It was hope. 

She pressed her lips together and nodded her head slowly, a small smile creeping up the right side of her lip. "That sounds like a good plan," she whispered. "But... what is the plan, exactly?"

Taking a deep, shaky breath, you felt your heart rate pick up as you stared down at the squiggly plan on the yellowing pages. Could you really follow through with this plan? Even though you had formulated it to ensure maximum probability of success, it included more bravery and courage than anything you had ever done in your whole life. You weren't sure if you were ready. But looking at Sparrow and the large bird cage around the two of you, you realized that the only thing you truly wanted in life was to be free from this prison, so that both you and Sparrow could finally have a chance to be truly happy and maybe find a way to gain control of your powers so you don't end up killing everyone in this universe. And so, breathing slowly out your fears, you offered Sparrow a small smile as you looked her straight in the eyes.

"I'm going to have to fight him."