.
✧Ninyel✧
Ash seeps through my fingers and into my very soul. Screaming empties me, but fuels the flames that engulf my home.
... Or maybe the extra power comes from my pyros, which fizz, and pop, and sparkle over the carnage. Colours dance over Oa's grave, the Matriarchy's pyre. For once, I do not marvel at the sight. How can I? How can I do anything but stare, and weep, and scream?
"Nin."
My name becomes a song, a hymn, a curse.
Ninyel. Ninyel. Ninyel! Nin?
Someone strips me of my cinders.
"Nin?"
Shideh's keening returns my sparks.
"Nanna!" I scream, tearing up mosaic stones. Faces fall apart. Legacies break. Flowers shrivel and die. We are a desert once again. "Gran!"
Why does being noticed feel like desolation?
"Nan!" Sandals sound festive. Golden charms warp as feet pound against street, stone, to tarnish in the sand. Again, I scream their names.
Sparks rain down in answer. "Gran!?"
Toasted bark and bubbling paint. Gifts from ancient kings lie scorched at my feet, which tread upon blackened leaves that crumble at the touch. I smell ruin. I smell death.
But there's something else within the shifting sands. Something that wraps around my ankle.
I gasp, dropping to my knees to push away the debris under which my grandmother is trapped.
One grandmother.
"Gran! Gran, are you okay? Where's-"
Black smoke. A fit of coughing near the charred stump of my home.
Whirling comes instinctively, and I feel an urge to help Nan as she stumbles out the cellar door, but-
"Go to her," says Lir, the man who painted stars on the soles of my shoes. He has gentle eyes, and an even softer voice. "We'll get Kharo out."
Oa approaches, believers and heretics alike. They come together to help but I-
"She'll be alright, Nin, I promise. Go see if your Nan's alright."
I nod wordlessly, sparing a glance for Shideh, Pallo... and Daniyal, apparently- who pays more attention to his bike than my bird. Once I'm sure he's tinkering and not sabotaging my family further, I run to Nan, keeled over and coughing smog.
"Nanna, are you-"
Trembling hands matte with soot cup my face.
"Nan?"
Her eyes are bloodshot, wild. "You shouldn't... you shouldn't be... not here!"
"No, Nan, I'm perfectly safe. None of my pyros would have such a delayed reaction, and the smoke-"
"No!"
She's trembling. I'm shaking. I ask her what's wrong, sounding so like a child. What's wrong? More like: what isn't?
Nan holds me still for a moment, colour draining from her cheeks. Then, with a voice like dust, she whispers, "They are coming."
And the world goes cold.
They're coming. Here. The Fetterlings.
They're coming to Oa, to One Tree.
"They're coming for you."
YOU ARE READING
Hide Your Fires
FantasyNations crumble when stars fall. ✧✧✧ PYRRHUS is the son of a tyrant and a captive of Kyadel, the Shining One's palace in the sky. To earn his freedom, he must compete against eleven fellow prisoners, many of whom possess kernels of the Shining One's...
