Pandora’s Anger

by Dannica Watkins

When she touched the sun the world glowed with so much radiance that even she could not withstand it, falling from the skies with the brightest grin that dripped sunlight from the creases. Her shiny auburn hair lit by rays of gold glowed in the wind. She fell blissfully unaware of the life she was to live, laughing as she descended from the clouds. For the ground did not shine like the heavens which she was built upon, but unwavering did she still have her glow-dripping smile upon her face. 

And if the ground did not shine then it would rise, high enough to be worthy of her being as she landed in its comforting embrace. The strings of wind gently laid her upon the quaking ground of the mortal pains. 

The earth and the skies would work as one to cultivate her as their own. More beautiful and stronger, she would shine above the rest.

Yet, as she walked on the plain and looked up at the skies, she realized the heavens were not going to bring her home. That made no sense to her. She was beautiful. She was strong. She was pure. Why would the heavens not want her? What compelled them to shed her away like a toy they had become bored of? The feeling was tossed into her chest. It burned and eventually boiled. 

Angry sadness laced her rasped voice, “I will scream my name to the skies!” she wailed to the clouds above, enraged as they left her below. 

This deity-like woman did not believe the grounds were worthy of her being, that she was too pure to roam hand in hand with the creatures of the land. So she screamed and she cried, she burnt cities and forests to ash in her fists of rage while flashing a heartbreaking grin to the skies, now dirtied with blood and ash. The land in which she roamed reeked of human cries and soot stained her silky dress that had once been like the shiny blue sky. And yet she laughed as she forced the heavens to witness the horrors she subjected upon the ground. Anger fueled her very being as her beauty mesmerized those surrounding her. The ground would feel the pain she bore and the sky would stare down upon its agony. 

A phantom of long-gone memories crawled up her spine occasionally, teasing her brain. Wings that had carried her across the heavens so many times now laid limp and mangled across her back. The illusion of them shining with an otherworldly glow brought bile to her mouth. The memories plagued her mind as they replayed over and over…

She screamed out in pain when the ground rose to embrace her from the winds. She held her resentment in her fist as she desperately wanted to climb back to her home. And when the ground hugged her tight, she burst out in tears when the drooping sockets that her wings lay upon cracked and bent in all wrong ways, searing with the pain of hellfire retching along her figure. Now, her wings are a disfigured and deformed monster.

“Look what has happened to me! Look what you have done! Look! LOOK! LOOK AT ME ALREADY! STOP IGNORING ME!” She demanded from those same mountain peaks. 

She desperately tried to spread her broken wings. Hiraeth overcame her mind while boiling teardrops rushed down from her cheeks. 

Still. Still, she was not allowed to return to the heavens which raised her. Mortals say it was due to her anger, corrupting her from the inside that nothing pure remained. 

Whispers. So many whispers. That she was a shell of what she once was. Now, no brighter than a shadow hiding from the sun. 

And so, as the words spilled into her ears and the crevices of her soul, she burned.

The grounds did not want and the skies did not need. The home she longed for cast her away. Now, homeless and lost, her wretched soul wanders on land, below the sky, releasing everything in between.