Loneliness mustn't feel so all-consuming in mid-July with peach trees existing and sweet buttercream, memory, fawns, juniper in the sky, pomegranates, honey, tulip fields, a radio in the distance playing jazz. A mosaic of unspoken words circle in a young girl's mind, sitting atop the bathroom counter, playing with the ends of her roughly trimmed hair as she hummed the tune of a song she had heard once before but didn't quite remember. Her heart was like a grey dawn, at sunrise it anchored down and left a stinging sunburn behind. July was never kind to her. But then again, what was July?

          Months, seasons, even years didn't exist when one was stranded in space. The Ark had escaped from a nuclear apocalypse that had killed everyone on Earth and left it simmering in radiation. 97 years had gone by and the brunette hadn't seen a July in her sixteen years of exhausting life.

          Imani Abadi had made herself her own muse, a consuming desire to be a part of a scene, anonymous. And she knew that it was cruel to be so optimistic, but in her solitude, she couldn't help but bask in idiotic fantasies of a world on the ground, sometimes those fantasies verging on prayer. Praying that someday, in less unfortunate circumstances, she would be able to feel endless fields of tulips on her fingertips and taste the sweet flavour of fresh pomegranate from elderly trees.

          Sixteen years of hiding. The one-child rule had slipped from her mother's fingers, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman. Imani applauded her bravery and keenness on keeping her daughter safe from being floated, but the girl was losing her mind, year after year spent alone with only the company of convoluted thoughts.

          And Imani never could've guessed that an opportunity to leave her solitude and see the Unity Day masquerade party could put her life at risk, that a boy just a couple years older than herself would be the sole reason she didn't immediately get floated when Marcus Kane found her curled up crying, wondering where she had come from. He was her miracle.

          Bellamy Blake knew very well of the one-child-rule, his own sister being a violation. He was shaking fists and trembling teeth, a fraction of his mind constantly wondering if she was still safe when he left their quarters. And his status as a Guard Cadet made him feel a sense of security, vulnerability being a trait non-existent in him. It just so happened to be fate that the boy came across Imani in her little room, hidden from all trouble on the Ark.

          "Are you here to float me?" She hadn't looked up from where she was scratching a small piece of chalk into the floor, patterns upon patterns winding their way along her walls, illustrating years of boredom. The words hung like poetry in the atmosphere around them, Bellamy standing disoriented in the small, well-hidden doorway. The silence between them was like a key on a piano pressed down for so long it became a pain in their ears. And the silence soon nurtured a friendship, Imani realizing that the boy meant no harm. Bellamy adored her, her stormy eyes, her sincere sensuality, the softness of her skin and her voice, he swore to protect her like his own sister.

          He would visit her often, providing her with a company she never had, bringing her books and radios to pass the time. And Bellamy embraced her solitude, basking in it, bones arching like flowers following the patterns of the sun. She had serious eyes, dark eyes, velvety eyes, and Bellamy found himself repeatedly lost in them.

          "Where do you feel stuff?" And when he asked her what she meant, Imani pointed to her stomach. "Here is anxiety." Bellamy placed a hand below his ribcage, his fingers lingering there for a moment before dropping back into his lap, his eyes watching the girl sitting across from him with immense precision and wonder. Imani held anger in her eyes and Bellamy in the palms of his hands. She held sadness in the base of her throat, he in his lungs. Imani named love and paused, realizing that she was terrified of what his answer could be, that he would feel a wildfire instead of a slow burn.

          Bellamy took the girl's delicate hands, held them in his own and placed them over his lungs first, slowly beginning to drag them down to his stomach, then back up to trace down his arms, up to his face and on top of his eyes, guiding her fingers to gently shut his eyelids.

          "Everywhere. Like I'm being consumed by some darkness and you are filling the spaces where I used to be empty." He wanted to build a universe in which he would never leave her alone in this depression-inducing bedroom. He wanted to crawl into her arms like ivy, tangled heat and platonic longing, because she was the one thing on the Ark that let him escape from all the troubles that ate him alive.

          With bloody knuckles, he'd follow her anywhere.

          "Don't be ridiculous, Bellamy." She removed her hands from his, her head bowing down to look into her lap, nervousness settling in her stomach. And Imani realized that real intimacy comes from the knowing of things that are only to be discovered through the sharing of mundanity, insights that are only to be glimpsed over the sharing of cut fruit, sitting in silence, cross-legged on the floor, passing the peach back and forth. His hand reached out to lift her chin, holding her gaze in his own. "Everywhere."

          But Imani Abadi longed to live in liberation. She wanted to sit in her own quarters with her family, not a small boarded up room where light couldn't reach. She wanted to read books Bellamy Blake didn't have to steal for her so that she wouldn't fall into insanity. She wanted to draw endless July's, not because it made time pass faster, but because she wanted to. She wanted to listen to her body, fall asleep with slow, sickly dreams that clouded her mind, without the worry of whether there would be a guard at her door when she woke. She didn't want her existence to be governed by the limitations of the Ark, or any of the artificial restraints that humanity had come to impose on itself. She wanted to be boundless and infinite.

          "Will you take me to see the masquerade?" Bellamy had made a grave mistake of telling his best friend about the party because he knew that Imani wouldn't rest until she got what she wanted. A fearless ballerina, the kind that never stops spinning because the music never stopped playing around her. The kind that went on despite the pain she endured, as if she had clouds beneath her feet. It was a sorrowful habit she'd picked up in her years of solidarity.

          "Imani, you know how risky that is." And the moment was like being left alone with a beautiful boy, who won't tell you that he loves you, but he does more than he loves himself. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like shoplifted, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave, and you're tired. You're left alone with a beautiful boy and you're trying to choke down the feeling, preventing yourself from telling him that you love him more than you love yourself. But he touches you to slow your trembling, the feeling of his fingering intertwined between your own like a prayer for which no words exist. And you feel your heart taking root in your body, leaving you crucified and bleeding and apologizing for all your sins, your existence.

         The way Imani looked up at Bellamy through hooded eyes made him swallow his protests, figuring that if he was already taking his sister to see the masquerade, what harm would it be to take his best friend. He found a way to sneak her out of the small prison for the first time in sixteen years, navigating their way to the party so she wouldn't be seen.

          A perfect reality would be one in which there was no solar-flare alert. One in which Imani never got caught. One in which Bellamy didn't lose his position as a Guard Cadet. One in which 100 prisoners weren't being sent to the ground.

✄

          "Prisoner nine-two-eight, face the wall." The brunette sighed at the relief of giving into self-destruction. She stood up, doing as the guards commanded, and turned to face the wall on the far end of her intoxicating Sky Box. On the Ark, every crime, no matter how small, is punishable by death unless one is under the age of eighteen. Imani Abadi, just a couple months away from being of age, had accepted her rotting fate from the moment she was tossed like a rag doll into her suffocating cell.

         "I don't turn eighteen for another two months, I think you've got the wrong person." She looked over her shoulder, smiling at the guards inspecting her clothes, patting her down roughly. "I get reviewed at eighteen, really looking forward to that. This place sucks, don't you think?" She felt the piercing texture of metal cuffs clasping around her wrists, the guards motioning for her to follow them out of the cell.

          Teenagers were being herded like cattle outside of their Sky Boxes, some putting up a fight while others pleasantly obeyed the guards instructions. And in the midst of the crowd, Imani's eye caught on a girl she assumed to be her age, her features similar to those she had seen before, soft yet holding thunderstorms powerful enough to destroy. There was about her a wildness that flashed in her eyes, spoiled and beautiful and easily bored.

          "Prisoner nine-two-eight, state your full name and reason for juvenile detention." Marcus Kane greeted her when she was led into a bigger room, a smile tugging at his lips. He had always been fond of the girl, knowing her parents extremely well. When they were floated for hiding their second child, he took it upon himself to care for the girl as if she was his own daughter, regardless of the fact that her existence was unknown to him for almost sixteen years. Imani would be forever grateful for his visits to her Sky Box, telling her stories of the hundreds of problems the Ark faced with the increasing population, and bringing her small treats to sweeten her captivity.

          "Hello, Marcus." Imani mocked him as he gave her a stern look, and the girl rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Imani Alaska Abadi. Illegal child to Farah and Elijah Abadi. Marcus, you don't visit me for a month and then send these jerks to take me away from my box? I was starting to like it in there. You know, cherish my last couple of months before you guys execute me." She took a seat without asking, watching the amusement in Kane's eyes.

          "Imani, you're not being executed." His expression changed suddenly, sighing as if bearing deathly news. "I have talked to you previously about our efforts and experimental trials to see if Earth is habitable, but those were foolish thoughts at the time. There was no possibility of sustaining life, until we uncovered Mount Weather." Kane turned to press a small button on his dashboard, displaying a visual of the terrain. He pointed to a spot on the screen, but Imani was drowning in confusion, anger.

          "The rules have changed for juvenile prisoners. All 100 of you are being sent to Earth, records wiped clean." Another pause. He gathered his thoughts, watching as the girl's eyes widened by the second. "I don't have much time, the Exodus is departing soon, but I have zero doubt that you will flourish on the ground. Call this a second chance."

          The girl was losing her mind, all honey and rage. And to feel anything at the moment was deranging, stripping her naked.

          "Hold on, wait, Marcus. The ground? How do you know it's safe?" The girl stood up abruptly, lunging at Marcus with question upon question. "Are you sending us all there to die? Reduce the population so there are more resources on the Ark?" Kane stood in silence, ignoring the young girl's pleas and inquiries as the guards walked forward, seizing her by the arms. "You can't do this. What about my family? Look at me, Kane, give me answers!" Tears formed in her eyes. Would she finally see July's?

          "Don't worry about your family, Imani, you get to go to Earth. Take care of yourself. Good luck, kid." There was a sharp pain on the side of her neck and Imani's eyes lulled to the back of her head, putting a stop to her wild, feral stare. Her body grew tender, legs no longer able to support her weight as she fell back into the arms of the guards, numb and unpresent.

✄

          Lovely-eyes. Death-touched. Witch. Imani came to her senses hours later, strapped to a chair on the Exodus Ship. Delinquents surrounded her, all slowly awakening into the same confusion as herself. Across from her sat a prisoner she recognized, Clarke Griffin, the traitor who'd been in solitary for about a year. She was just a few weeks away from turning eighteen, her dirty blonde hair wild about her face as she conversed with the boy sitting beside her, eyes darting to catch Imani's every few seconds.

          "What's your name? I don't think I recognize you from Juvie." Clarke turned forward in her seat to look at Imani, eyes full of wonder and anticipation.

          "Imani Abadi. Illegal second child." Clarke stared at her as if the girl had a mouth full of fire, a sight to behold. Pale, mysterious, like a lily, drowned, under water. Clarke attempted to respond to her, but was interrupted by a sudden crash of the rapidly moving ship. "What the hell was that?"

          "That was the atmosphere." The boy sitting next to Clarke, whom Imani later learned was Wells Jaha (son to none other than Chancellor Jaha, how fortunate that the man risked his own son's life by sending him to Earth), informed her with a slight laugh. "You guys are too dense. We get to go to Earth, can you believe that?"

          "No, I'm still trying to process this entire situation." Imani looked at him with wide, moon-drunk, haunted eyes. Earth was just a dream to her, visions of July's danced about her mind, jasmine flowers, sweetbriar, barefoot and sun-dazed she would bite into this ripe peach of a month. Instead of meadows and honey combs, her hands clung tightly to the straps of her seat. Imani noticed a wristband on her arm, the cold metal almost burning her skin compared to her overheated surroundings, but she paid no mind to it as the Exodus rapidly descended. Her insanities were disrupted by the voice of Chancellor Jaha ringing through the drop ship, catching almost every delinquent's attention.

          "Prisoners of the Ark, hear me now. You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us, indeed for mankind itself." A couple delinquents scoffed at this, understandably distressed. "We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable."

          "Expendable?" Imani and Clarke shared a frown. "You dad is a dick, Wells." The brunette confessed, angry and half in love with the idea of experiencing pitch-black winter nights, living in her bones. Clarke had mused over the fact that she had never seen the girl before, since she had been in solitary confinement for close to a year, and knew whoever walked the halls and occupied cells around her. The luminescence casted her equivocal corpse-glow despite their dimness. There was something uncanny, demonic, fascinating about her, like a pure aura encapsulating her softly.

          "The drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war, was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain three hundred people for up to two years." Their attention was drawn away from the screen by a boy, who had managed to remove the straps of his seat and float through the ship.

          "Check it out. Your dad floated me, after all." Finn laughed, his statement directed at Wells, as others cheered for him, encouraging his feral behavior. Imani looked at the boy in shock, unable to comprehend the severity of his actions. "You should stay put if you want to live. Aren't you the idiot who wasted a month of oxygen on an illegal spacewalk?" Clarke responded for the boy, who simply looked at Finn in wonder.

          "Yeah, but it was fun. I'm Finn." The floating boy introduced himself when the drop ship lurched downwards, gravity taking its inevitable place as Finn and other delinquents who had escaped from their seats hit the ground violently. "Stay in your seats!" Clarke yelled for others to stay put as the ship entered a state of total system failure, hurtling towards Earth, completely off course. "Finn, are you okay?" No response, as the boy had hit his head, looking like a wounded bird, ineffably melancholy.

          Lights flickered on and off in an un-rhythmic manner, machines humming to a stop as parachutes were deployed, causing the ship to crash forcefully as it made its impact. All 100 prisoners sat in question, raw divinity spilling from their silence. Slowly one by one, they began to click off the buckles of their seats, moving unsteadily. Imani watched as Clarke hastily got out of her own seat, rushing towards where Finn had recovered and was sitting against the wall, his friend however lying unconscious.

          Imani hesitantly stood up from her own seat, unusual, tragic, and oddly alive. Dark and tormented, the furor of passion, a despair of idealism she couldn't attain. Imani Abadi longed to feel beautiful and holy things about her figure, and refusing to give them up was perhaps her most fatal flaw. For the stargirl had a certain cynical satisfaction in seeing just how terrifying things could get in her presence.

          "The outer door is on the lower level. Let's go." A boy shouted, and many others agreed to this idea, following him down like a herd of cattle unbeknownst of their death. Clarke stood up abruptly from where she was kneeling next to the unconscious boy, yelling something about how they shouldn't just open the doors of the ship without knowing what was outside, if the atmosphere on Earth was even breathable. Imani followed behind her, climbing down a short ladder before landing somewhat ungracefully on the lower platform, a smaller, densely packed room.

          "Back it up." Imani swore she could recognize his voice amongst a crowd. He looked like a corrupt angel, almost preternaturally handsome but with a louche quality that hinted at unspoken depravity. He carried an unforgettable, unnerving face, sun-blood and poison. His eyes were like a demoniacal sea, and that was how one drowned.

          "Stop. The air could be toxic." Clarke urged him to make a better decision, but he persisted. "If the air is toxic, we're all dead, anyway."

          A girl rushed up to him, their interactions and mannerisms similar to those that were shared between siblings, and Imani recognized her as the girl she had seen as she was being taken from her cell. Spoiled and beautiful and easily bored. Octavia Blake, the girl found hidden in the floor. Imani now clearly remembered her from the night of the Unity Day masquerade party, guards restraining her in handcuffs as she thrashed about, attempting to escape their hold. The two conversed briefly before Bellamy turned back towards the door, turning the handle slowly as if in suspense. But, a sudden urge to hear the boy's voice once again overtook Imani's better judgment.

          "Bellamy?" She called out his name, navigating through delinquents until he stood right before her, staring at the girl in astonishment. Being apart for a year had taken its toll on their friendship, Bellamy didn't know where the girl had gone. Captive, executed? They choked on halos that angels had buried six feet under realization.

          "Imani Abadi. I thought I would never see you again." And his arms around her were like stardust words spoken to her in whispers. In the crooks of his body, she found her religion.