Defying Vesuvius

Prologue

She stood in the center of the valley, brown stone cliffs rising up on either side, wildflowers swaying at her feet. But she was oblivious to it all. Because it was coming.

Now.

A freak of nature, it would be called in the years to come, but what historians didn't know—what no one knew—was that it was all because of her. She was the freak of nature.

Now she stood alone in the field, watching as the village she had called home burned to the ground. Orange and yellow flames devoured the sky as the fire raged through the town, engulfing everything and leaving nothing in its wake. Great plumes of black smoke stained the sky and dropped white ash over her bare shoulders, tangling in her hair and coating her lungs as she breathed.

She cast a glance behind her and her blonde curls fell from the carefully constructed updo into a messy cascade down her back. She knelt and watched as her fingers, tinged black at the tips by soot, reached out and stroked the petals of a wild rose at her feet, staining the white shades of gray. A single tear slipped down her cheek and landed on the hard dirt by her knees, sizzling and hissing as it turned immediately into steam. Already, she could feel the heat rising up from the earth, as though the world itself were trying to catch fire.

The flames had descended from the town and spilled over the far edge of the valley, an impenetrable wall of destruction. All because of her. She reached around and grabbed the small pouch secured at the small of her back. Untying the velvet strings which held it closed, she poured the tiny quartz pebbles into her palms, relishing the feeling of their cool surface against her warm skin.

The fire ripped through the valley with the ferocity of a thousand horses, crackling and spitting and hissing, surrounding her on all sides. Mere inches away. She opened her hands and let the pebbles slip through her fingers just like the tears slipped from between her lashes. The flames licked her feet, singed the tips of her hair, and dried her tears before they had a chance to fall. She spread her arms wide and threw her head back as the fire swallowed her.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, the flames disappeared, leaving a world buried under soot and destruction, and one girl to endure it all. Everything was black: the mountain where the town had stood moments before, the valley once blooming with flowers, even the sky was heavy with smoke in the middle of the day.

This was the consequence of her foolishness. She was the only survivor of the fire that had spread for miles—forced to live with the reminders of her mistakes. The fire had spared her from death.

Sometimes life was a better punishment.

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