Elemental

1. THE BLUE HAIRED FIRE STARTER

Judging by the number of eyes that had taken to oggling at her, Tori gathered that choosing to dye her long hip length hair an electric blue was not the best of decisions, to say the least.

It was terribly unconventional. But so was she. In fact, for as long as she could remember, all her fellow residents at the children's home had regarded her with slight caution, as though she could be a potential nut case. Her dressing style, which was awfully quirky, and her sarcastic responses to even the kindest of comments didn't help her case much.

Madam Minch had warned her, time and time again, to keep herself in check, and not to give in to her mad impulses. But she just couldn't help it. When these impulses pounded through her, there was little she could do than to go ahead with them. Otherwise, they would haunt her relentlessly until she'd feel like she was loosing her mind.

Like the time she had climbed up to the school terraces to skive class and had had the impulse to hang off the metal pipe that protruded from the side of the building. When recess had rolled in, the rest of the school had gathered below her in the field in numb shock, anticipating her hand to slip any moment. The head master was certainly less than impressed to be called unceremoniously out of his office just as he had started on his tea to talk sense into that slightly odd, slightly retarded Victoria who was hanging carefree as a monkey off the fourth floor drainage pipe.

The school nurse was appalled. She immediately suggested some drugs and psychotherapy, neither of which, Tori was sure, madam could afford. And so, she had settled with a three week suspension to, in the head master's words, clear her mind. Needless to say, madam hadn't been too happy either. When she had demanded that Tori explain herself, the girl had found herself lost for words, a phenomenon that never happened. She couldn't even begin to understand how her impulses worked. All she knew was that when she did stick with them, her mind would feel clearer, and her life in perspective.

Tori imagined madam Minch wouldn't be too happy to see her hair blue. There wasn't much poor madam Minch could do though. At sixty five years of age, boasting a fair mop of wispy white hair, she had learnt how to keep her children in check while simultaneously letting them be.

She had started the children's home at the age of thirty, when she discovered that she would never bear children of her own. This, she had thought, would be even better. At her age, however, she had never imagined she would have to put up with the fairly large number of delinquents who she housed, who loved nothing more than to stir up trouble.

Tori, one could say, was one such character. Madam Minch, however, could never really put her into that category. She didn't fit. She didn't fit in with the others either. Her extraordinarily tall and slim slightly malnourished frame and ordinarily flaming red hair normally ensured that she stood out like a sore thumb.

Tori ignored the stares and whispers that followed her out of the underground train and up the escalator to the road. She whistled to herself as she walked towards the children's home, quite preoccupied with how she was going to explain to madam Minch that she had been suspended from school for the umpteenth time.

She waved at the gate man who could only stare, flabbergasted at the sight of her, and slipped in through the large wooden front door, hoping to go unnoticed. She tiptoed down the dark dinghy hall, past the kitchen, from which bubbling sounds were ensuing, and was almost at the stairs when a loud ringing voice came echoing through the hall and stopped her in her tracks.

"And where do you think you're going, missy?" Victoria slowly turned around to face a very tired looking worked up madam Minch who had had a particularly difficult day sorting out the home's mysteriously clogged toilets. Her arms were akimbo, and she raised her eyebrows as her eyes travelled to Tori's blue hair, an angry flush colouring her chubby cheeks.