Delilah lived in a tall, teetering house that seemed to bend and shake with the wind. The windows were never quite sturdy or thick enough to keep out the cold-air blowing off the near-by body of water. They lived on a cliff, you see, jutting out over an ever dangerously splashing sea. She would often stand on the edge of the cliff at night and wonder where the waves would carry her, were she to jump, or if she would fly - like she did in many of her dreams - into the vast and sparkling navy blue canvas high above her. She wondered, were she to do that, if she would be able to collect the stars in a jar, like fire-flies, and keep them on a shelf in her room to light it in the darkest of nights.
In her tall, teetering house just before the edge of reality, Delilah also lived with her two younger siblings - fraternal twins named Alexander and Alexandria; her mother, named Anna; and her father, named Dayton. At least, she had, before her father’s mysterious disappearance and assumed death. He was simply just gone one day, without a note or a trace, his morning coffee still steaming on their modest kitchen table. It was just her, her mother, and her little brother and sister now.
She had often felt, before, that her father was her only connection to this family - an inkling she had shared with him many times, and just as often had waved away as her being young and simply coming at odds with her mother. Now more than ever, however, she could not help but notice the glaring differences between her and the rest of the people she lived with.
Delilah could only describe them as fair. Their personalities were as deep as the pigment in their appearances - light and barely there. In contrast to her (and her father’s, for that matter) dark, rounded features, each of them were pale, with white-blond hair and gray eyes. Their noses and mouths and chins made up of thin lines and angles.
Delilah, therefore, was not at all surprised when, one Sunday morning, she found the house simply and completely empty, without any prior explanation as to why this could be. All that was left was a note on the kitchen table informing her that her mother and two younger siblings had gone to the nearest town (which happened to be an hour away), to attend the church’s morning service. She found this vaguely strange - while her father had been alive, they had not attended or practiced any religious beliefs or functions, and she - along with the rest of their secluded family, had simply accepted this without much question. She didn’t pay much attention to it, however - her mother’s behavior had become increasingly odd after the disappearance of her father. This simply meant that she would have the old, dusty house to herself, and that suited her fine.
She didn’t bother changing out of her nightgown or setting her hair in the proper curls when she stepped out of the door leading from the kitchen to the yard - behavior that her mother would have found simply unacceptable. But, the nearest neighbors were miles away, and it was a fine summer day - the sun making the ground warm and soft beneath her bare feet. She stepped closer to the edge of the cliff, her attention focused solely on the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below. She barely even registered that she had stopped herself subconsciously, or her transition from standing to laying in the grass, until she saw the cotton-like fluffy clouds drifting by slowly above her. A peaceful smile spread across Delilah’s mouth as her eyes fluttered shut.
This would be the last peaceful moment Delilah experienced for awhile.
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