Ashes (Flame Ash Burned Backstory)

Chapter 2: Fight

24th December 1997

The four children sat outside the house upon the small lawn, which was whitened by the frost and soft snowflakes that had been drifting down from the dark grey sky since earlier that morning.

A large, dull grey stone marked the grave of their mother, decorated with a single, wilted daisy chain. It was fragile; about to break but somehow just still holding itself together.

Evie and Lyric had turned six years old just a week or so ago, but their birthday hadn't been a fun time like it had been the year before.

Each day for the four children mostly consisted of hiding away in their one shared bedroom and sitting by their mother's grave side by side for hours on end, because that was the only way they could feel close to her.

"Lula?" Lyric spoke softly, looking to the area beside her where the youngest child sat in silence, staring down at the ground and tracing circles in the snow. Lula looked up at her sister with dull eyes and bruises littering her pale skin. "Are you cold? I can give you my jacket."

"I'm alright..." Lula whispered. The little girl had goosebumps all over her body, and her fingers had turned red from the cold. "I'd rather be out here..."

Lula's voice trailed off into silence, before tears began rolling down her cheeks and she hugged her knees to her chest. Her breathing began speeding up, as if she had been running a marathon and couldn't catch her breath no matter how hard she tried.

"Please don't let him hurt me again..." Lula began to sob, her body shaking violently as panic took over. "Please..."

Lyric picked Lula up and set her upon her lap, where she hugged the little girl tightly and smoothed her hair gently whilst helping her to control her breathing. Joe moved closer to Lula and Lyric, hugging the two of them. Evie, on the other hand, stood up and glared through one of the downstairs windows.

"I'm going to kill him." Evie growled, her hands clenched into fists. "I swear to god, I'll make him suffer. Nobody hurts my little sister and gets away with it."

"Evie!" Lyric snapped, looking up at her twin with narrowed eyes. "Stop saying stuff like that!"

"Why?" Evie glared down at her twin. "At least I'm not afraid to fight to protect the people I love! Nothing is going to change unless we fight: there's no other way!" Her voice rose into a yell. "Two months ago, when mum told us to protect Lula and Joe because we're the oldest, you were so afraid to fight that you froze when I needed you! Now Lula gets beat up every day and Joe barely speaks anymore - because you were too afraid to fight! They're suffering because you're a wimp!"

"Mum never raised us to be violent!" Lyric shot back. "You're the only one out of all of us who keeps insisting that fighting is the answer!"

"Sometimes it is!" Evie argued back. "On the night our mum died, she died protecting us! She told us to protect Lula and Joe with those knives! There was no other way out but to fight!"

"We're just kids..." Joe's voice was less than a whisper, filled with utter hopelessness, and tears had begun to stream down his cheeks too. He had just... given up. "He's a fully grown man. You don't stand a chance against him, Evie, and you know it. Even fighting isn't going to get us out of this."