Angels of Ash and Dust
Caitlin D.
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The idea for [] traces its earliest origins back almost five years, to an assignment at the end of the year in my eighth-grade language arts class. Since then, it's changed a lot, and I intend to one day make it into a full-length novel.
It's based on the idea of life after a devastating loss, and drops in on 2-A-23-259—or Shaye—several times throughout her journey, starting with the death of her partner, Nascha, in a training accident that left Shaye unable to use her wings, and ending with her realizing that she's going to be okay. It seeks to emphasize that, although Shaye's done her best to heal, she will carry the wounds for the rest of her life, and that's okay. She's grown around the loss, as a tree grows around its wounds.
In the story's world, it's normal for people to be born with wings. There are several 'academies', with the one that Shaye was born at being the most prestigious, that raise a kind of super-soldier, raised from birth for use in the government's military, with those that don't make the cut going to work for private agencies. They're created in pairs and bonded through an implant in their brain from the moment they're born. Each pair, like Shaye and Nascha, have never spent even an hour apart in their lives, and—due to the implant—can read almost read each other's minds, and even feel each other's pain. Usually, when one dies, the other soon follows, driven mad they don't die due to surrounding circumstances (Shaye survived by going into a coma, it made it so she didn't feel all the pain, although—especially at the beginning—she wishes she'd just died). Two pairs make a squad (Hugh and Bastian make up their other half), and fifty squads make up a year group. They're all assigned ID numbers based on their position in each group (Shaye's second in her pair, the first pair in her squad, the 23rd squad in her year group, and the 259th year group in her academy's records).
As I mentioned earlier, this story has changed a lot over the years, becoming almost unrecognizable from the original work. It's a story that's close to my heart, as I've practically grown up with the characters, and it's grown with me.
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Exploring and expressing my creativity positively impacts my life, because it allows me a place to explore myself, as well as giving me a wonderful escape from reality.
