Cold Devotion

Chapter 1

Zahida

It has been two weeks since Father and Nicholas have been dead from the war. One and a half weeks since the Nocolla army general had come by the house to tell us the news. One week since Mother's depression. Five days since school started back. Three days since Zahida thought that it would be a good idea to run away in search of a flower.
Zahida hadn't actually thought out the plan through.

A ten year old in the sub zero temperatures with her eight year old sister that could hardly read and write properly were out on their own with no protection or the proper materials needed to survive the harsh weather. They had passed some poisonous berries and nuts that were too hard to eat on their way.

It was well last their bedtimes but they didn't care and they were fine with it. They were searching for a rare flower that only grows once a year. The Kadapul flower. It didn't occur to them that they would find a flower that small in a world do big. The flower only bloomed for short hours once every year, and their mother, Mother, kept yapping about it every year before she just stopped. Maybe she was too depressed to even think about it this year. That made Zahida sad.

The snow crunched underneath the two girls as the trudged along, picking up anything that looked and tasted edible and spitting out anything that obviously wasn't. Meara had picked up some poison ivy and now her hands kept itching as it the world might be saved when she finished. Although it wasn't saved with all the battles and the war going on.

One thing both the girls didn't understand is why they were fighting in the first place. One person said that it was because of land with the oil fields. Another said it was because of land and the amount of food that should share between both parties. Nobody really knew, since all everybody said was that Ptolem just started attacking the country. Ptolem was the opposing country, the one that had started the war with Noctolla, Zahida's home country. Meara was born in a different country, but Mother and Father would never talk about it. They would never be able to talk about it, since Father was dead and Mother was too depressed to talk about it.

That made Zahida upset. She knew why she and her sister was on this trip, why they were risking their lives just to cheer up their mom. It was then, crawling through the snow with her eight year old sister slowly taking a step, that she saw something orange fly above them and stopped. Meara had stumbled into her and fallen back on her head. There was a Phoenix up there, flying above them in circles. She stared at it, slowly melting in its gaze. So beautiful was that bird; so majestic.

It was until then, that Zahida realized the Phoenix was flying to them.