Hi! My name is Masika Shadows. This is the first time I've posted. Anyway, just be nice, okay? Please leave a review if you're feeling generous.

Darkness hung over the empty night like a net sewn from shadows. The air quivered and pulsed gently as some invisible hand marred the perfect surface of the sky; glassy and smooth like the skin of a calm river, flat and untouched on the surface. The night was still and tranquil, and the shadows stretched across the sky, specked here and there with stars that cut through the darkness like beacons from a lighthouse on a distant shore.

The land beneath the sky was nearly as sparse and empty as the heavens themselves. Here and there shapes shot up toward the sky, outlined clear against the horizon. The full moon hung in the sky above distant mountain peaks. Among the shapes one could identify a small house and barn. Smaller figures were scattered across the yard, a chicken coop, a well, and a teenage girl, silhouetted against the horizon.

The girl was roughly fifteen or sixteen, but small for her age. Not short, just…small. She was extremely thin and looked sickly and pale (most assumed she starved herself to keep the figure), and while she was of average height, she nearly always hunched over, with her chin against her chest, eyes staring towards the ground, so that she seemed to be so small that you could have walked by and not noticed her at all.

She was dressed in a long, dark blue skirt that flapped around her ankles in the warm summer breeze. A black denim jacket covered a stark white shirt. Her long, straight hair blew about in the wind, its color a bright strawberry blond. Her eyes were pointed not at the ground, but for once, up, toward the stars, staring in awe as if at a constellation only she could see. They could easily be mistaken for stormy gray, but upon closer inspection, her eyes were clearly a deep, shining silver.

As she stared up at the sky, unmoving, far away in the confines of the little house, a clock clicked forward to 12:01. As if on cue, the girl took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, before turning on her heel and took a step towards the old house.

The day was Friday, July 13; the girl's name was Aysel, and as she headed toward the cottage she had called home for the last sixteen years, she wished herself a silent happy birthday.

There. That was bad, wasn't it? It'll get better… I hope.