Jordyn Kohr is a sixteen-year old writer who participated and completed the summer 2025 Writer’s Palette Writing Challenge. Her short story, ” Darker Hues,” tells of a girl named Hestia from a mysterious and powerful family who must cope with the loss of her father and the consequences of her family’s actions.
Read Jordyn’s story below:
I don’t know where to begin. Should I tell you my name? Maybe you want to know about my family? My favorite color? My beginnings? I’ll start from the beginning.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… Too far? I think so. Okay how about this:
My birthday is July 27th. My birth was a normal one. My mom spent the day in the hospital and I came into this world around 5:00 pm. My older siblings were present and my younger twin came into the world 30 minutes after me. I got my ears pierced when I was 3. I developed anxiety around that age. I still struggle with that but my sixteen years of life have shown a plethora of good reasons why. I started developing a personality when I was seven. I became different around that time too. My family noticed that and may have cast me out. For nine years, I have been living at a school for people like me. Though even they don’t really know what I am.
In everything, I have found peace among the trees, calm in the rain, quiet among the stars. I have a name among my peers at school: freak, weirdo, strange. You name any of the cruel nicknames the students at your high school have called you and I’ve probably been called it, aside from the really inappropriate ones because the school I go to has more dignity than that. The name I was given by my parents might also be considered cruel. Hestia is what they called me, namely for the glow they saw in my eyes when I opened them. I prefer my middle name, Nimue, but it isn’t much better considering both of my names have some nerdy correlation to literature. Hestia being related to Greek myth and Nimue to Arthurian legend. Of course, my names leave me as a nerd too, but of course that also makes me different.
I guess, now is a decent time to describe my physique to you. I have white hair. Don’t ask me how, amazing genetics is my guess. My eyes are a dark green with hints of brown around my pupils. I have extremely fair skin. I always wear dresses to cover the countless scars on my leg. For that reason and because it is the dress code for the place that I live, at least for the girls. I’m rather lean. Many people would call me underweight, I’ve had my fair share of basically starving myself unintentionally, but yeah. That’s how I look.
Nature has been my home any time I need to get out of the fortress I have to call home. The wind in my hair is my favorite feeling, that or rain on my skin. I often will race the wolves. They are my only friends. The trees often speak to me. They sing in hushed voices so as to not alert the world of their voices. They often tell me that I am one of them. Maybe that is why everything feels so harmonious within me when I am in nature or maybe that is why everything feels so off when I’m with those in the fortress or my family. No matter, I still find calm in the woods. Getting lost is the best way to live life in my opinion.
“Nimue!” the annoying boy who calls himself my friend shouts, “It’s time for dinner!”
“I’m coming, Chase!” I didn’t really want to go to dinner. I’m a freak among those people. I find my bed along with my comfort books to be a place of far more comfort than any other room or thing in the entire fortress.
“Hurry! All the good stuff will be gone if you don’t come quick!” His voice was melodic in a rough way. He is the one human I would allow myself to find comfort in. The one person I would let myself get close to after what they did to me.
I open my door to find his hand raised in a fist prepared to knock on my door once again. He was handsome, even with his messy curly brown hair. Many would not find him handsome with his mocha colored skin. People only thought tan skin was handsome or beautiful, so the two of us quickly bonded over our undesirable skin tones. He runs his raised hand through his hair and I felt my breathing slightly hitch as he did so. Then I curse myself for doing so. This boy means nothing to me.
“Clearly,” he says.
“What?” I ask him.
“Clearly, I mean nothing to you,” he said, repeating my exact thought. Sometimes I forget his difference is reading minds.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t ever read my mind.”
“I did, but your thoughts are so intriguing when they are about me.”
I roll my eyes and allow him to escort me to dinner. We sit and eat. The chatter of those around us ebbs and flows like most conversations do, getting louder and softer at various points, but Chase and I remain rather quiet throughout the meal, only speaking to ask for pepper and salt or the like. I sit on the edge of my seat, the possibility of being touched is too stressful for my mind to properly comprehend it. After everyone leaves to retire to their dorm lobbies, Chase and I get up to leave. He escorts me to the library this time. We sit and I drink tea while he makes himself a mug of hot cocoa. Then we are relaxing on the sofas in the library as I pull out a book about mythology and start on a section about Hercules. He starts chuckling.
“What?” I ask.
“Oh nothing. Just the cute way you smirk to yourself as you read the myths for which you are named. You are quite beautiful.” I blush as he finishes.
“Hmm.” I hum. Then I quickly decide to retire for the night, “I shall see you in the morning, Chase.” Then I’m heading to my room before he can say good night.
I slept peacefully last night. But, of course, knowing my luck that peace lasted only through the night. When I wake up, I notice that the oranging leaves are beginning to fall off their respective trees. I went to the window to watch in awe as the seasons changed before my eyes. That awe is quickly replaced with something else. A dread I can’t quite place.
“Hey, Hestia,” I turn in a whirl to find my older sister, Aspyn, sitting in an armchair watching me watch the leaves, “It’s been a long time.”
Of my siblings, Aspyn is the least bearable. I can’t stand her, so I don’t know why my parents sent her. I dress myself in a white button up blouse and a brown tank top style dress. I don’t worry about my hair and wrap a square cloth around it.
“We need to talk,” Aspyn says, following desperately as I find my way to my clearing in the woods.
“Desperation is not a good look on you,” I say, not bothering to face her. Then I run into a solid body. I stumble and it, he, catches me.
“Well well, if it isn’t the golden child, Griffin. How’s my twin doing?” I ask, as I finally look up into the eyes I looked into everyday for the first seven years of our lives. They are a fiery orange. Beautiful and perfect. They are our mother’s eyes. His raven hair hangs lazily in those eyes of his. I love my twin, but I do not love the way he treated me during our last interaction.
“I am not your twin,” he mutters grumpily. I often forget how he disowned me.
“Griffin, step away from her,” the oldest of us says. Raven is a man of many mysteries, like I am a lady of lots of labyrinthine qualities, but he has always been the one to nurse my wounds.
“So what is this? A sibling inter-” I begin.
“No,” Raven cuts me off, “We came to tell you that Father is dead.”
“Murdered actually,” Griffin says.
“We wanted you to hear it from us,” Aspyn speaks. It’s like they rehearsed this. Each only speaking a little before the next speaks.
“So what? Do you think I did this?” I ask.
“Would that really be so hard to believe? After what you did?” Griffin mocks.
“Griffin!” Raven reprimands. “Tell us, did you kill our father?”
“When did he die? I have proof of an alibi.”
“He was murdered around 7 pm, last night. We found him when we got home around 9,” Aspyn says.
“I was at dinner then. You can ask Chase,” I say, feigning brushing off their words.
My father is dead? Even after all that he did to me, he is still my father and I still love him. I wouldn’t kill him.
“Chase? Has someone found a boy?” Griffin taunts me.
“Like you care.” I scoff.
“Knock it off you two,” Aspyn rolls her eyes.
“Let’s go,” Raven says.
“So all you needed was information and you decided to ruin my morning to get it?”
“Pretty much,” Aspyn says before turning back to the fortress and my brothers follow her.
Then they are gone. And I am left thinking about what was just revealed. A wolf, the one I call Vixen, comes close to me, probably in an effort to soothe my rising panic.
“Thanks,” I whisper to her. Then she is gone again and I am left to listen to the trees.
My father is dead. It was a homicide. I’m the one suspected of killing him. Just because of my history of killing those around me. Completely by accident I’ll have you know, but I did enjoy it, but only a little. Ugh, I’m hopeless aren’t I?
I begin my trek back to the fortress. Classes will be starting tomorrow and I should probably organize my books. And my tea! Because you never know who will stop in for a quick drink late in the night.
As if my thoughts beckoned him, a small bat landed gracefully on my window sill and his wing tapped gently on the glass. I opened the window knowing this bat was as friendly as they could get. Before the bat landed anywhere, it turned into a man.
“Hello Caspian,” I state, emotionless. I am already preparing his tea. Out of the corner of my eye, he is brushing his red hair from his shimmering blue eyes.
“Hello, Hestia,” he says, drawing near to me. Carefully and gently, he wraps his strong arms around me. He has an allure to him that all vampires possess but only those of his stature are irresistible.
“One, you know I hate that name. Two, I will stop making you tea if you so much as think you can finally get away with having even a sip of my blood straight from the vein. And three, you were the one who killed my father weren’t you?” This man was centuries older than I, he knew how to get things done.
“Three, after all that he has done to you, it wouldn’t surprise me if I did, but it was not me. Two, you know that you pull me close to you naturally, so I am sorry that I cannot resist your pull. One, but my darling Hestia, your name speaks truth, you are as warm as the hearth for which you are named,” he mirrors my framework and it infuriates me, but I busy myself with his tea and prick my finger with a sewing needle and allow a drop of blood to fall into the mug. I practically feel his eyes glow at the sight of my blood. I wrap a bandage around my finger and hand him the mug.
“Will you join me for tea? I believe we have some things to discuss. Considering your claim. And considering that you are invading my privacy. I told you to stay away from me.”
“I’m afraid I can no longer do that. Darkness has started to hunt you and I have reason to believe it is here in this fortress.”
The Darkness of which Caspian speaks is familiar to me. I almost embraced it once. He was the one who saved me. If I told you about it, well let’s just say that you would agree with my siblings. That moment is what got me disowned by my twin. Raven was the only one who understood me and what I did.
Since then I have tried to be good. The word “tried” is the very key to my entire life. I have always tried to be something I am not.
“Maybe it’s time you be the thing that you are,” Caspian says, knowing my thoughts are reeling about my past just from the look on my face, “Darling, the Darkness killed your father.”
“How do you know?” I question, because if he knows this, then maybe he is confessing to being there when my father died.
“You know I embraced the Darkness and that means I can feel when it attacks. It was trying to make itself look good for you. Trying to get you to see the goodness inside of it, but do not be fooled, Hestia, it is evil incarnate.”
“I won’t let it back in, don’t worry.” Caspian and I talked for many hours before he finally left me, promising to track down the Darkness that killed my father.
The next morning, I wake up to a light knock on my door. I drowsily get up to see who it is. Opening the door, I find Chase’s timid smile splayed across his face.
“Hey, Nimue,” I kind of flinch at the name because everyone from the previous day had called me by my birth name, “I was hoping I could speak to you before classes started for the day.”
“Sure,” I say, reluctantly, “What do you want to talk to me about?”
“Well, recently I have found myself desiring to spend more time with you and I have begun to not just tolerate you but to kind of like you as well.”
“Sooo you are admitting your romantic feelings for me, right now?” I ask.
“Yes?” he says it like a question. This self-conscious cute-not-cute boy is saying that he loves me.
“Look, I like you, but I’m not sure you really want to like me, let alone love me in the way that romantically needs to be done.” I begin to close the door on him thinking that is it.
But no. He sticks his foot into the door and I have to stop closing it so that I don’t squash him. He says, “No matter what you did in your past, I think I can still love you. You are not your past. You are no longer that monster, so long as you choose to take a step forward.”
Then he disappears. He disappears into the crowd of people now milling about and heading to their first class of the semester. I lose sight of his bushy hair rather quickly, but just as quickly, I close my dorm door. Turning to my normal morning cares, I ponder this boy. This boy, if I were anyone else, that I could love. I could live happily with him. I am happier than usual when I am with him. Maybe Griffin is right, maybe I have found a boy. I shake my head a little and turn to the important matters. If I fall in love, I will have no time for my studies or avoiding my scars.
Today, I dress myself in a simple cream dress. I brush my hair and open my door with a tote bag hanging off my shoulder and head to my first class, Animal Care. They teach us how to care for basic animals like reptiles and the occasional mammal. I don’t enjoy it much considering all of the time I spend in the woods. A lot of the information is incorrect. Severely incorrect. When I get to class, though, I notice rather than the normal teacher, Mr. Conners, Caspian is standing behind the desk.
“Attention class! Mr. Conners is on leave for this semester and for the time being I will be your teacher. You can call me Mr. Pan, as in the Greek god of the wild. Don’t get it wrong.”
I roll my eyes as he speaks. He’s just doing this to get under my skin. Of course, he chose a Greek mythological figure. I feign listening as he “teaches” us about the proper way to brush a horse.
Then I see it. The flicker of a shadow that should not be able to move on its own.
“Hello Darkness, my old friend,” I mutter.
I stand up and Caspian’s gaze quickly flicks to me as well as everyone else’s.
“Class dismissed!” he quickly shouts and everyone scrambles out of the room, not because they want to get out of class but because they are afraid of me, afraid of how different I am.
Caspian is beside me in an instant. No matter how much I hate him, he still will always be present for me. Chase is also beside me in an instant.
The Darkness, seeing those who are willing to support me, vanishes, leaving me to catch my breath as I reel from seeing my pain all over again.
“What was that?” Chase asks.
“That was what killed my father.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” He’s trying to be sympathetic. I know that, but it stings. He doesn’t know what my father put me through.
“It’s okay. Thanks,” I know what to say, even though I don’t feel it. Who cares.
Without a moments notice, guards are in the doorway.
“Hestia Nimue, come with us,” one of them says.
“What?” Chase asks. “You aren’t taking her anywhere.”
He does like me, I realize, perhaps he can love me. Chase positions himself between me and the guards.
“She is a danger, we must take her away,” a different one says.
“Chase, let her go. We can fix this later,” Caspian says.
Chase sighs and moves out of the way. I can protect myself; I don’t need a boy’s help.
One of the guards grabs underneath my arm and leads me out of the room, but I don’t get far with them. Instead, I am screaming and fighting against them. I wrangle myself free and run down the hallways. I find my way to the courtyard and escape to the woods. The guards are chasing after me, but I am too fast for them to catch me. As soon as I reach the woods, the wolves find me and I am running to freedom alongside them.
Voices are not necessary in the woods. Why on earth would anyone choose to disrupt the peace? The wolves lead me to a place in the woods I have never been to before. Torches that should not have been there lit up all around me. So this is what I get for running away from the school? A creepy circle with creepy torches that is not natural. Just my luck with the Darkness coming after me and all!!
The wolves have disappeared by now, leaving me to wonder where I am.
A shiver runs down my spine when I hear it. My name. Echoing from the trees all around me, but it was not the trees that were speaking. It was the circle of stones in which I stood. The voice was neither masculine nor feminine. It carried no weight and yet felt burdensome. The stones were speaking to me. How was that even possible? It wasn’t.
“Sit,” a materialistic voice commanded. The command was irresistible. I sat down immediately.
I saw only a sliver of the shadow magic before it hit me and I was no longer in the stone circle.
I was in my childhood home. My mother stood at the stove-top cooking chicken noodle soup. My twin was not far from me. He wasn’t older than 5 years old. This was before it happened, before I became different. Before the Darkness. Raven sat on the couch with a book in hand. It was about dragons or something. Aspyn was outside tending to the garden. I remember this day. This was the day my heart truly understood, but my mind did not. I remember examining everyone and feeling different but nothing ever came of it.
The day after this my father begins to train me, as he calls it. This was my last normal day. I spent the evening playing with Griffin before sitting on the couch with Raven for a bit and ultimately ended up in the garden with Aspyn before going in for dinner. I did not spend my last normal day like this originally. Originally, I self-isolated. Stayed in my room all day. Separated myself from those I loved because, though, I didn’t know it, but instead felt it, they didn’t love me. I go to bed like I had originally, and when I wake up my father is standing over me. He tells me to put on some old clothes and meet him outside in the back. I’m five years old and feel every strike my father lays on me as I make mistakes in my fighting stances. He was unknowingly turning me into a weapon.
In just two years of that training, I was stronger, faster, better than all of my siblings and my father combined, but then I did it. I was out in the village, alone. Some boys cornered me. The ring leader, Soren, was taunting me. Threatening me. He tore my sleeve and I twisted his arm behind his back and put him on the ground with one clean move. I didn’t hear the sickening crunch of the skull meeting the hard ground. I didn’t feel the warm flow of blood that was coming out of his head. I didn’t see the tears streaming down the other boys’ faces. I didn’t smell the sweat coming off my body from how hard I had hit the boy. I don’t taste the blood in my own mouth from biting my tongue as I killed the boy. When an adult finally got there, Soren was dead. The adrenaline I received from the fight had finally receded and I was left to face the gravity of what I had just done. The librarian had seen what had happened from her window across the street, so after she gave her statement and I gave mine to the police, she led me home.
I was in a stupor. I could never forget my parents’ looks when they saw me. My mother’s was of pure terror. Her youngest daughter covered in blood must have been a sight to behold. My father’s was of pride. The monster he had trained me to be was fully incarnate. That night I saw something move in the shadows of my bedroom. As I climbed out of bed, I found the thing in my mirror. It was a wolf staring back at me. I had closed my eyes fearing it was just a bad dream and when I opened them, the wolf was gone. Young me passed it off as a bad dream. It had to have just been a bad dream. Right? Another thing appeared in my room that night. The Darkness appeared to me the first time. It was so alluring, so entrancing. I reached out to it that night but a bat had seen me and landed on the window sill. He stopped me before I could really do any damage to myself or those resting peacefully within my home. The next day I was shipped off to the fortress. The last thing my twin said to me before I left was that I was no sister of his.
I am returned to the stone circle. That was not how I remembered most of those days. I did not remember the wolf in the mirror. I must have suppressed that pain. I did not remember the full extent of the pain my father put me through. I feel a warm liquid running down my cheeks. Tears, I realize.
“What is this place?” I ask, weakly.
“This place reveals the truth. The truth of the past and the truth of where our road crosses.”
“Our road?” The tears stop falling as a sense of dread washes over me.
“Yes, Hestia, our road,” a figure steps out, still clothed in shadows and I realize what this place is.
I scramble to my feet, drowsy from all of the remembering I had just done.
“Don’t worry dear girl. Our fate is a joyous one. Full of destruction and war.”
Without warning, Caspian and Chase come crashing through the trees.
They say blue eyes are the most beautiful, but I am most partial to the brown ones that stare back at me as Chase grabs my hands, turning me away from the looming danger of the Darkness standing before me.
“Look at me, Nimue” he commands me, but his voice is gentle, “I will protect you. You were not loved properly when you were young, so I will give you my heart.”
As if summoning the people who did not love me, my siblings stepped out of the trees. Aspyn and Griffin bore sinister looks, while Raven bore one as if he wished he didn’t have to be there. This circle, these people. I am going to die in this place. This is my grave.
The Darkness took a step toward me, my two friends placed themselves between me and it. Except the Darkness was not an “it”. I realize that now. It is and has always been my father.
“Well done, my daughter. You finally understand,” he says, revealing himself. My father is a stocky man, his black hair and stark blue eyes are way too familiar.
I turn to my siblings. “You all knew. You know about the suffering he put me through?”
“Yes.” Aspyn states, her tone almost proud.
“He’s our father, Hestia,” Griffin’s voice was soft but cruel.
I wait for Raven to say something, “And what about you, Ray?” I use his childhood nickname to try to make a connection, to try to get him to look at me. When he does look up, his eyes have tears in them.
“Hes, I’m sorry, but if I didn’t he would have done the same to me and Aspyn and Griffin. It was wisest to give him one child but spare the others.”
“So you chose me? So you gave him… me?”
“Oh you poor girl. You don’t know the full story. You were cursed by a witch. It was always going to be you,” my father sneers.
Chase slips his hand into mine and gives it a light squeeze.
“Well, you can’t use me anymore. You’re going to have to kill me, like you did when I was young. I won’t be your monster anymore.”
“Hestia,” Raven tries to make a move toward me.
“I refuse to be used anymore! Kill me!” I scream at my father.
Caspian moves closer to me. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispers.
“I’m already the villain in this story. I’m already a monster. The villain always loses. The monster always dies.”
My father has drawn his sword. He is making his way over to me. There is one last thing I need to do before I die. I gently remove my hand from Chase’s and turn to face him.
“I love you, my dearest friend,” I say to him. I lightly kiss him. It was my goodbye. Then I pull away and face Caspian, the friend who had saved me once before.
“You can’t save me this time, vampire.”
My father is close now. I take a step toward him. I make it easy on him. I could just as easily face him and win, but the villain always loses and the monster always dies. I hear my heart beat one minute and then I don’t. I feel the grass as I fall to it. I see nothing. I smell nothing. I taste nothing. The heroes won. The monster is dead.
“Hestia Nimue died on June 10th at age 16. She was a monster to many, but a friend to me. I loved her. She was not a monster. She was a girl with monsters and we failed to help her,” Chase says at my funeral. I am not there, of course, but I hear his voice as he talks about me. There were two steps to unleashing my curse. Caspian, being a vampire, had helped me to find the witch who placed it on me when I was thirteen. We knew who my father was. We knew I would not die. The first step was that I had to kill someone. After I killed Soren, I became different. I had a bestial side of me that could not be tamed. Secondly, I had to die. Only then could I become a full werewolf. Only then could my true self be revealed.
To everyone, except for Caspian, I am dead. Slowly I fade to a memory, except to Chase. He always remembers me. For a long time, he searches for me, and for a long time, I hide from him. I was afraid he would stop loving me if he saw what I had become. During one of Caspian and I’s long conversations, he convinces me that Chase would still love me. That for as long as he had searched, there is no way he wouldn’t. Eventually, I reintroduced myself to my love. He still loves me.
As Chase grows old, I stay young. I was still 16 when he was 60. We get married when he turns 30. We live happily and have a family, two brilliant children, a son and a daughter. They also grow old while I stay young. Caspian is the only one I have left, all my grandchildren and great-grandchildren forget about me. Caspian and I travel the world. We visit a new place everyday. We live for an eternity. No one remembers us, remembers our pains and our joys.
In our travels, after about a hundred years, we come across a young vampire, Elenor. We learn that she was turned into a vampire by the same one who turned Caspian. In our hunt for revenge against that vampire, we meet a young werewolf, Kieran. He was cursed by the same witch who cursed me. We get our revenge, eventually, but it takes us another hundred years. Then we settled down. Caspian and I get married and legally adopt Elenor and Kieran. Together, as a family, like Chase would have wanted, we live. You may see us and not even realize it, but we are here and we still live on. We are the villains. We died in the world’s eyes, so that we could still live, if only in the shadows. We are monsters. The darkness is our home. There we shall stay. We are here, and we still live on.
The End
