Elemental (discontinued)

Chapter 1: Meet Zara

A red-haired girl peacefully wonders into her dreamland , just then a shrill sound of the wake-up alarm. The redhead groans as she rubs her eyelids as if it will remove her sleepiness.

'Great, just great' she thought as she got out of her bed.

It isn't easy being the 'weird one' in an orphanage full of teen-agers , though, mind you, nothing is easy when it comes to Zara's life.
"Move along there freak" a girl says in disgust

"yeah, freak" another girl sneers.

Zara silently groans in frustration but obliged nonetheless. The black-eyed girl slowly approaches the hall to get her breakfast and get the chores for the day which occupied most of Zara's day. At breakfast, she tried to lay-low as usual. After she got her breakfast (which was a piece of stale bread with some milk) she dashed to a table where no body would see her and sat there till most kids had gotten there chores.

'Oh boy, here we go' she thought as she got to the board where the chores list was displayed.

'Yay, cleaning the toilet,not'  the redhead thought as she made her way to the toilets.

The day was full of scrubbing , rinse and repeat. As Zara stares at her reflection in the now clean mirror, she begins to think when her life took a big turn.

Start of flashback

A six-year-old called Zara stares at the window. It was in the middle of winter and for some reason, Zara couldn't even stand the cold outside. She usually would make a snowman or make snow angels, but this winter something seems to have changed as she found herself clinging to her blanket as if her life depended on it. Although she was sitting right next to the huge fireplace she felt as though she was in Antarctica. The red-haired girl suddenly heard a strange noise.

"What is that? " she said out loud.

The noise was like a whisper. The amused girl looked around to find the source . Her scanning eyes landed on the gigantic fireplace. The whispers became louder as her small frame slowly made its way near the fire as though it was hypnotized. She now heard the whispers clearly and they were calling her, literally.

"Zara, Zara, Zara" it called her.

Zara did not realize that the empty room was now starting to fill up with shivering children.

"Hey Zara! " A child called but, no use.

"Zara? " he called her again, worried. The red head still didn't respond. By now, all the children were back and were staring and whispering about her, though she couldn't hear them. All the black-eyed girl could hear was the soft whispers of fire calling her. The directoress of the orphanage had arrived to see why the children had stopped. The directoress eyed the red-haired girl head to toe and then started shaking her as though she was a piece of paper. Zara was snapped out of her trance by two big hands roughly shaking her tiny shoulders.

"Huh, what happened? " she asked, clearly confused and creeped out because of the situation.

"Don't play dumb with me girl, I know you only wanted an excuse to get out of the chores but guess what, you just got yourself extra work" the directoress replied coldly.

End of flashback

The red head grimaced at the memory.

'I can't live like this'  she thought to herself 'I have to escape'

The shrill sound of the bell came.

'Well, if I am gonna escape, I gotta do it before the holidays end' was what she thought as she walked to the Hall that started fill with hungry children.