1 Chapter one: Mother (Preview)

The astray road was horizontally lined down the deserted planes of a sad, hollow desert—where nobody can find her, nobody can chase her. It's safe. It's safe for this sad, hollow girl out here—because nobody else ever is out over there.

It's just Charlotte. It's just Charlotte.

She yearned that feeling for so long—isolation. Knowing that her life could be left alone in peace. But why? The only time she ever felt privacy—that feeling where she knows she can fall down and rest without anyone peeking through to her like that—was the only time she has to visit. Visit her mother, a powerful leader that simply didn't want her. Or her sister. Mother never appreciated any of them, which is why Charlotte finds this trip rather pointless—she knew she won't even appreciate this for her daughter. Her stomach groans her deep discomfort, her deep discontent here, but she has no choice. Mother won't appreciate it—she doesn't care. No she doesn't. But she wants it. She wants to scowl Charlotte for her ongoing failures in her life, she really wants it. So Charlotte does it, secretly. Without causing any distress in her younger sister, Samantha, about traveling so far, so far away from their beloved city—down inside dark memories. Down into a sad, hollow desert. Like a drain.

It's a golden one, with plants blooming from its dead ones. It was indeed a hauntingly beautiful desert. It's a shame that the beauty in things are frequently cursed.

Charlotte aroused out of her bronze layered car, scrapped with all kinds of scratch marks. Her glistening black rubber boots wavered in the many many piles of shabby sand wailing below, as she cocked her head in a saddened position. All lights were out, all lights gave out in her heart even though the flourishing sun rays beaming just above her head kept feeling like they were giving life back to it. But keyword; felt. She gazed at the wooden house in front—those red eyes were sad and hollow; dead eyes is what someone might describe it as. Dead and blank eyes, dead and blank body language.....but then Charlotte rubber boots galloped inside the broken door. And entered the broken house—starting inside the Illuminating living room.

"I'm back, mother. Don't seem so surprised," her monotonous voice echoed inside this deserted clutter—the brown sofa was turned over and the skin of the ceiling was unraveling apart. Left alone to helplessly drift on the deluge on the wooden floor—where the hell did all this water come from?

"Screw off, I'm not cleaning this mess."

Charlotte decked through the shriveling piles of jagged branches, crying newspapers, and the frail ceiling pieces that hung in her way like a piñata—one that she effortlessly demolished as her depressive dark silhouette loomed into the indistinct mist of the hallways—where she could find where her mother placed it. Them, the set, a messenger device used to send....well, messages. It supposed to feel like a gift. Charlotte felt like she should be proud of this—the device she met when she lifelessly stumbled into the hole of a room inside the house. She should be proud, she must be proud. But Charlotte can't replicate feelings of pride....or shame. The set was devoid....and that's it. It's just devoid, as Charlotte collapsed right in front of its glimmering rays and shapes—feeling devoid. Empty.

Her eyes still had that dead and blank look.

The set looked in those wastelands, looked inside the grief. Yet, with the beaming lights following them right behind. As Charlotte's face sputtered, drooped down lowly in melancholy—she finally felt that shame that she couldn't grasp seconds before. And she didn't like it—her deathly eyes watered—the deep shame in herself ripped through the layers of her heart and the feeling only heightened when she pressed the button that was always taunting her from afar. She may not have noticed it, took alight of it and construed it——the moment she fell inside this damp room, this damp hellzone. But that demon was staring her down. Just endlessly voicing "press it, press it, press it." It could have been the fucking reason why Charlotte looked away when she pressed the button. Just a button. She wondered why she was so fearful today.

Silence emerged, she never moved from her crippling position. The set launched into pretty yet daunting stars before a hologram, glitching, shone in the air; it was superior of everything as that everything was just nothing.

The hologram had its long, straight, and purple hair; the hair sharpshooted at the top of its head like curly little ant antennas. The hologram posed itself a feminine look, a powerful model that clearly declared who that hologram even was.

You've guessed it. The great commander—one and only chaotic leader—

"Mother. DisCORDia," Charlotte mocked; pretending to deflect all the sorrow that was painting her face moments ago.

DisCORDia froze, her paddled shoulders jumped before she snarled a nasty look at her daughter below; who was suddenly bowing and on her knees—definitely not the position she was in when Discordia had her back turned.

"What? No!" She hollered; high-pitched. "Bitch, you know you said it wrong."

Charlotte faked a smiled. "Bitch, you're crazy." It wasn't entirely fake however.

Discordia blushed being completely embarrassed—though due to her role, due to her position here. She only sputtered more sounding like a fucking donkey on steroids. Charlotte thought it was beautiful.

"No, you're crazy! No, I-I...Just SHUT UP!"

She did. But Charlotte still didn't stopped smiling, though.

"And don't call me a bitch!" Discordia quickly ordered, hands on her hips now. "...bitch."

Charlotte sighed, "Thank you, mother."

"Haha, yeah, that's better."

Silence.

Charlotte immediately faked a cough; "*Ahem* Discordia."

An instant grimace flattened Discordia's face and her head whipped at her like a fierce animal; Aw, I love her. Not much, but at least I do but honestly screw her right now, she pondered. She begun cleaning out her throat as her thin figure wiggled into a sassy arms crossed, screw off, look: now it's time to do what she frickin came here for. Before things get sidelined again.

Discordia brewed out a huff of hot air, "New work for you today: glad to see that you are truly how loyal Sam thinks you are. I'm starting to think the same, Charl."

She tried picking Charlotte's scars, poking the things that are sensitive to her. But Charlotte remained silent. She kept her head perfectly slanted down looking like a feared preyed animal—she couldn't even see the hologram of her mother. Almost as if that frail and weak animal dreaded the thought of it, which is different. Very different.

What's wrong with her?

Discordia stopped in the middle of her words. Immediately realizing the defeated behavior Charlotte has—it's so damn depressing. She wondered if she finally got to her.

".....Anyway, we need you to travel to Lake Rui and go stone some barriers! Brick barriers—or whatever, just barriers. Just...walls."

Charlotte's head twitched a bit before her monotonous tone of voice erupted out of her tiny pikes. "You want me to build....walls?"

"No! The kingdom wants you to build walls! We want you to build walls! The legionaries want you to build walls...do you understand my grammar?"

"No, I'm deaf," Charlotte sarcastically responded, head continued to rattle.

Discordia smiled cruelly. "And that's hilarious, but please just go do it! Don't bring you dang sarcasm into this, because this is serious! This is the only way we could keep the kingdom safe from those monsters. Remember what they could do to us! What they could do to Sam...the little sister.....And since you're technically a princess, for being my daughter and all haha, pretty great right? This shit is your shit—so don't screw it up! Princess!"

Charlotte's head bowed down out of her control—it was kinda creepy, yes, but the light in her dead eyes shone again! And they were the fiery orange red they were supposed to her—for a princess and all, she understands everything.

"Understood."

Okay, that was a blank response, Discordia thought.

"Thank you....we're counting on you, Charlotte. Please don't mess this up, okay?"

"Okay."

Another blank response. Another message was received. The hovering hologram vanished into thin air, a rotten smell of foul flooded water dawned upon Charlotte; damn I guess I really should clean that up, she thought to herself....then she completed decked out of the wooden house and never even thought about grabbing a mob. She thought about her mother, Discordia, what she would think of this behavior, and all the shameful thoughts blasted in and out of her head like whirling airplanes; lazy. Unproductive. Unhygienic. She imagined her mother spitting those words out like darts to her heart, but then she imagined Discordia saying the same thing about herself. Lazy. Unproductive. And unhygienic. Dear god, that's exactly like her!

"Like mother and daughter; one simply can't live without the other."

Charlotte frequently thought about this saying that her mother always rendered upon her ever since she was a child; right now, as she was gliding down the same sad, hollow desert that embarked the beginning of her day—the same desert with its long, hollow, and singular road that threatened you of its infinite mass. She realizes that saying was bullshit. Because Charlotte can definitely live without that witch; she ordered her not to say it but under the cold dense breath of her mouth—she said-

"Bitch." As that saying came up back again and Charlotte zipped past the city sign. Over the speed limit.

"You're now entering City Zenith; capital of Pitchforkgrazer!"

Charlotte's back. And she can't wait to see her annoying, hyperactive, and wild little sister prying at her from behind at the first moment her figure slips into the apartment. The thought of it just honestly makes her smile. No really!