Username + ID: Ucanthandleme + 809102
Name: Lucent (Luce); Shining, glowing, giving off light
Gender: Male
Society:Beauty after death, these were the words Luce’s people lived by. Only after death would you find beauty. His people to the outside world were known as the butterfly people. Like butterflies they had many forms, each was but a stage, a platform for the final beautiful emergence of the butterfly. The form of a caterpillar was merely the blood for the new body, the chrysalis merely the shell for their second form, they held no meaning and only once they were gone would you be left with the beautiful butterfly… Everyone wanted to be a beautiful butterfly. Beauty was everything to Luce’s people, your beauty determined your rank within society, what purpose you would hold was only equal to your beauty, nothing more nothing less. They worshipped beauty above anything else.
Unlike the outside world beauty was only determined by one criteria… the colour of your eyes. This is what made his people unique. Every child was born with eyes of white, like a blank slate waiting to be coloured, this would not change all through their youth. That was until they turned ten. From young to the age of ten there was only one thing they were taught, beauty was everything and to obtain beauty you must go through death. Of course a concept such as death was not well understood by children, but the elders said no more. Every single child longed for the day they would attain beauty, long for the moment their eyes were dyed a different colour. Everyone longed for beauty.
So on the day of their tenth birthday each child was sent to the land of dreams, an untold place where they would receive their beauty. No one ever told them though, the most beautiful butterflies were usually the ones that were ugliest caterpillars. The land of dreams, the land where they would find their beauty, was all a nightmare. They put the children into the forest with nothing, they said to go in as deep as you can, the further into the forest you went the more beautiful you would be. Children did not know the true meaning of beauty after death. So the children trudged through the forest, into not a dream but a nightmare. Luce lived this nightmare too. He too, like the ones before him, went into the forest to find his beauty.
The forest started out beautiful, filled with colours and light, but as night descended the real nightmare began. Night was when the monsters came out. His village was also known as another name to the outside world… the place where children never die. They were right though, as Luce thought back to his childhood, not one child died, whether by accident, sickness or any other way. No child died. Until the forest that was. Each child learned very quickly what death was. Those monsters of the night showed no mercy. Each time a child died they would awaken with a fright, realising soon when their hands touched the dirt forest floor that what just happened was not a nightmare. The more times one died the brighter their eyes became.
Beauty in death. Those words that had been told to them all their life, those words made sense now. But in the moment they had no clue about the changes to their eyes there was only one thought in their heads, to get out of the forest as fast as they could. It seems the elders were right though, the ones that ran as far into the forest as they could were the ones that came out the most beautiful. After all it took longer to leave the forest, they spent longer with the monsters, they died more times, the more beautiful their eyes became. Luce realised why no children died, they could not die until they turned ten. Why did the elders send them off to their deaths to die more times then they could count. Simple, they wanted all the children to be the most beautiful they could be.
Only when daybreak hit did the monsters disappear and the children that were in the middle of the forest could get out. The first death was engraved in the children's hearts and memory, but each one after that was a blur. That day seemed to be wiped from their memory but the changes of their body weren’t. All the children who had gone to the forest went through a metamorphosis, whether the birth of their new body, their new eyes, their new mind, it was hard to say whether it was beautiful or not. But the tradition lived on, despite the pain of death, the beauty that came with it was too wonderful, too beautiful to stop. So it continued, again and again, child after child, they would never speak a word about what the forest actually was, what the true meaning of beauty after death was. They kept it locked away because they too wanted their children to be beautiful. The village longed for beauty… even if it meant death.
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The hierarchy- Those with the brightest eyes gained the ability to do higher level jobs, such as healing and art, whereas those with duller coloured eyes were left with intensive work such as building, cleaning, cooking. You had no choice, everything was based on how brightly coloured your eyes were but despite this there were no complaints within the village. Simply because everyone worshipped the beautiful, the ones with duller eyes thought it was right that they served the ones with brighter eyes, after all the brighter the eyes the more deaths one had been through. Those with duller eyes had also experience the forest of dreams like the others, but they didn’t go far into the forest do managed to leave before dying many times, the ones with brighter eyes had gone through more, so it was only right they got to live in peace after… that and they were so beautiful.
History- It’s believed the reason why the brightness of eyes are equated to beauty is due to the history of the tribe. The butterfly people were originally a small caravan of travelers who traveled to many different places. They had white eyes and white hair, it was hard to distinguish a difference between those of the same age range as both men and women kept their hair at the same length and there was no tonal difference between their hair and eyes. You could only tell if they were old, young or in between those two ages. As they travelled the group stumbled upon a beautiful forest and decided to set up camp for the night. This was the turning point of their history. The monster awoke and began to massacre the travelers, there was no way to fend them off, the old died first, then the middle aged, but surprisingly the monsters did not touch even one child under the age of ten. And those who were the age of ten seemed to die then come back to life, they defended as many of the adults and elderly as they could for the attacks.
The more braver they were, the more lives they saved, the more likely they were to die. Finally once the morning sun came the monsters disappeared, and all that was left was carnage. The elders, adults and young children who managed to survive were enamoured by the discovery that all of the children who had died and come back to life had beautiful brightly coloured eyes, the ones that protected them the most had the brightest eyes. Never before had the people seen those with different colour eyes to white. So the children who saved their lives and had brightly coloured eyes were worshipped. They left the forest and settled close by, it was likely that envy of the brightly coloured eyed children that motivated their next action. They began to send any child who turned ten into the forest, so they too could gain the brightly coloured eyes and avenge their people. Thus slowly of generation the love for brightly coloured eyes was born.
The empty eyed children-Some children like Luce instead of receiving brightly coloured eyes after death instead lost their pupils altogether. This however, did not make them hated due to not having coloured eyes that made them beautiful, instead it was seen as a sign of great beauty. Those who lost their pupils were thought to have gained such bright eyes that they were stolen by the sky and made into stars. So those with no pupils were taken care of as the greatest beauties of the tribe, they were taken care of to the utmost degree, fights actually happened to be allowed to take care of them as it was seen as a great honour to take care of someone so beautiful.
(1481/---)
