Saffron's Fire

An Inauspicious Beginning: 7:00am Choosing Day

The cool night breeze played over the form of a sleeping girl. She tossed and turned in her silk sheets in the throws of a horrendous nightmare.The sheer voluminous curtains swayed gently and a soft eeeahhh of a peacock echoed in the exotic night.

Carrigan Saffron woke suddenly with a scream and cold sweat running down her body. She began to cry and rock herself trying to bring comfort in her waking nightmare. She awoke this way sometimes at night since...well since she couldn't remember. As the horrors slowly faded from her consciousness she shakily put a blanket around her shoulders and walked to her balcony.

She looked out over the lush Mediterranean landscape. The breeze again played with her hair and cooled her face and she allowed one more tear to fall before she hardened herself for the day ahead. The dawn was just beginning to illuminate the spirals of the flower beds in all their splendor.  She placed her hand on her bench where a copy of Paradise Lost and a few other titles are resting.

Though she never quite remembered her nightmare all the way through, tonight she it had seemed more terrible than before because she had seen a glimmer. A glimmer is what Carrigan called a true memory, it was a chink in the mind block of recollections before her 16th birthday. She peaked through and saw her, the other girl. The happy girl totally unsuspicious of the horrors that would befall her and her family. Then the nightmare invaded the memory and the girl was taken away by the horrors that haunted her dreams and that is when she woke up. Glimmers had been happening more frequently for the past two months now and she was hoping her memory would, in time, return fully to her. .

Remembering that healthy glowing face she smiled wistfully to herself and tried to push through her memory block but it was no use. She would only get a taste tonight but maybe that was all she needed for now. Her life was about to go down another unalterable path. It was choosing day.

She spat in disgust at the thought of it. 'Choosing Day' was a simplified form of the name that all young women of a certain ilk had come to dread. It should have been called 'spoils day' or 'casting lots day' for no one she knew or cared for had any choice in the matter at all. Not since the day she had been selected to be trained and groomed for this.

She was letting herself get too bitter about a life she knew she could not control. If she were a less passionate person, maybe this transition of prisoner of war to slave might be less. Maybe that was a lie she told herself to placate the inferno. 

The sun had started to rise and the air steamed with the humid heat. She felt her hair, wet with sweat curl mercilessly into fat corkscrews and stick to her glistening face. The garden below sparkled in colorful splendor. She heard her bedroom door open and close and the light steps that she knew well heading in her direction.

"Hello Evelyn, couldn't sleep either?" Carrigan politely asked as the slim tall figure approached. Her little sister wrapped her arms around Carrigan.

"Sure," Evelyn whispered, "let's go with that."

Carrigan returned the hug and said, " I didn't wake you, did I? Those nightmares...." she trailed off. Her sister didn't need her to even finish the sentence. Her brave little sister suffered her own nightmares in silence.

Evelyn shook her head, "I couldn't sleep because of today being the day that it is. Choosing Day. Then I heard you and wanted to come and check that you were ok."

Carrigan shrugged and didn't answer. Nightmares such as hers were almost a nightly occurrence but she hadn't woken up with screams in a very long time.

Evelyn, turned her big sister towards her and looked her dead in the eye and warned, "Katelyn is coming too she is bringing the lavender oil."

Carrigan groaned. Katelyn, their gentle and loving older sister, always had an natural remedy ready for her sisters to try. How she got them was a mystery and Carrigan detested when they were used on her.