WELCOME

I NEED A HERO
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ROSALIND BELLA SPADE



I open a door, looking for a dream once swallowed by darkness.


IS IT A BIRD?
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Angels don't fall; they descend.
Her name was Rosalind in the beginning, and she, like every other little girl, was afraid of the monsters. Not the monsters under the bed. The things under the bed were not monsters. They protected her. And she knew that they would always protect her from the monsters. They would hold her while she would cry after the monsters would come to devour her. They would put their hands over her mouth when she would have a nightmare so the monsters would not hurt her because of a scream. They would push the tangles out of her wild, weedy, yellow hair and get her clean as needed, so the monsters would keep their wrath at bay. They were her protectors, and people called it a childhood normality. They called the sentinels that she held so dearly to her heart imaginary friends.

Rosie was born into a world that did not accept her. She was always different. Always knowing things she never learned, always saying nonsense. And even though she was born short, Rosie loved the sky, the stars, the wind, the clouds, everything.

They were not like the monsters under every other little girls' nightmare. Rosie's monsters were there when she woke up from the dreams she wished were real. The monsters were there when she ate breakfast. The monsters were there when she left for school and returned home. The monsters were there when she tried to pretend herself away. They were always there. When something went wrong in their monster world, they would be there to hit her and pull her pretty gold locks out of her scalp. They would starve her if ever she embarrassed them or made them look foolish. She never meant to, it was just the way of the little girl. Monsters never cared, though. They only cared about their love for each other and the mistake that was a small girl called Rosalind.

It didn't help that Rosie was overly sensitive and desperately dependent on others. To the monsters she was pathetic, and they felt they needed to toughen her up. That was probably one of the reasons that they were cruel to her so much. That they hit her and beat on her and starved her, so she would stop needing them so damn much. Because they didn't need her. She never told; Rosalind needed them like she needed air. She could cling to them and they would shake her off, and she would only come back like a kicked puppy.

Her guardians hated the monsters, and wished they could destroy them. It infuriated them that such a small, wonderful little girl was the spawn of such evil. So they blessed her one night, and gave her the magic that had been theirs. And when they gave her this gift, they were gone, never to return, not knowing that what they had given her would drive her to madness.

She discovered her abilities as a witch when she was eight, when she tried to fly out of her second-story window when her parents were not home. She floated to the ground. She tried to tell her parents of this, but they just beat her and told her she was lying. Magic was unheard of in their house, and with such a religion as theirs, magic was a sin. Even the mention of it sent their unnamed god trembling. At least, that's what they believed.

Rosie fell in love with a boy in a book. A prince living on a planet that may or may not have been bigger than his own body. His hobbies included raising a rose, kissing her petals, and watching a match burn out all by himself. Always alone. Like her. Rosie wanted to go to that planet, to be a rose for him. During the days of the protectors under the bed, she would look into the autumn sky and see migrating birds, wondering if she may lasso them and fly into the sky, to the Little Prince's planet. No longer would they be lonely. Some nights, when she was sore from being thrown about a room and bruises were fresh, she swore she could see him in the beautiful starlit sky, flying on doves, looking for a friend on earth. And then she would dream that night of him taking her away from the pain, to a planet that would only belong to the two of them.

Though she didn't get a special prince to take her away to another world, because when she was eleven she found she could talk to birds. They talked back. By this time her mind had begun to blur and distort, so when they talked back to her she wasn’t sure if it was real or not. What was real was the fact that birds flocked to her and even the wildest ones would let her pet them. They would whisper things to her, words of love and encouragement, they would tell her not to be afraid, that a time would come where she would be free. It was like having the Guardians again, having something she could find comfort in.

“The Little Prince” awakened a love in Rosie for the constellations and the stars and the sun and the moon. She had wanted to be a singer at one point, but that became irrelevant when she figured out that she was tone deaf. Music meant nothing to her, anyway, not like the stars. Then she wanted to be a florist, but was allergic to many flowers. Such fragile things held nothing compared to the constancy of the heavens. She loved both the science as well as the mystical behind the ethereal bodies. Loving the gaseous sun billions of lightyears away, loving the cycles they took. She loved the pictures and stories they took on, loved the myths and legends, loved the way the gods threw the light into the sky. She adored the sky, watching the little speckles of light and knowing their movement and always watching the planets rise and fall. It was her escape when she was young, and her haven as she grew older.

She was always pretty, the guardians called her angel when she was small. Irony was, that she needed an angel, and that was probably why she never got one. Eve was short, only being five feet and three inches tall. She had a nice amount of hips, but not too much for her petite body. She was fragile-looking, with thin hips and a flat chest, making her almost boyish in appearance. Her ankles and wrists were thin, resulting in her hurting herself a lot. A little too large for the rest of her body, her feet would often trip over themselves when she walked. It didn’t help that she likes big, clunky shoes that give her a little bit of height.

When she was thirteen, she ran. The birds finally made her get her courage up, and she ran away from the house that had caused the magical girl so much pain. With her gifts, she never got hungry, but her mind was so lost she didn’t know what to do. Until she saw the Heroes.

She had been running for so long, she had been hurting and scared for such a long time she had forgotten what it was like to see something beautiful, for in New York there are no stars. But she saw them flying through the air, making the world safe and lovely. She’d see them and dream about using her mystical gifts for similar feats, even though her brain was all messed up, she dreamed of flying and making the world better, making it so that children would not feel the pain she had gone through for her entire life. It was then that she decided she wanted to join them, even if her head wasn't all right.

Even if it had not been for childhood faerie-tales, Rosie would have still fallen in love with the stars. Just little specks of light in an infinite realm of darkness. Creating pictures, influencing the tides, speaking silence, darkness in a dance around her, it was beautiful. Everything was dreamy. Everything is perfect from far away. Nothing hurt in the stars, and they were constant. She could always find her way through the city at night, she knew the stars better than she knew anything else in the world. Rosie liked to explore as long as it would be a clear night and she could see the stars and know where she was. She knew where the heavenly bodies would be in what season, she knew all the constellations and where all the zodiacs were. But it was probably her extensive knowledge of the heavens that was her downfall. Because of how much she knew of them that the skies influenced her heavily. She would feel far from the world when the moon was small, and she cried when the stars in her zodiac would be covered up. The luna really made her emotions quake; it was the ruler of her zodiac. It was just a fantasy, but looking at the sky that glitters like an upturned treasure chest... lost in that mysterious, beautiful moon, she would just wish for a beautiful, fallen little prince to take her away on dove's wings.

WHO HOLDS THE PEN?
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HELLO, MY NAME IS JENNYBIRD AND I'M A NINETEENGIRL.
I LOVE YOUR SITE. I FOUND IT THROUGHMAGIC. YOU
MAY KNOW ME AS WILLIAM LEO. YOU CAN CONTACT ME
AT bluejennybird@live.com

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