Pyrotechnics (Willow X Wilson) (A Don't Starve Fanfiction)

~8~

     Willow was acutely aware that she was dreaming. She found herself swathed in fierce heat, comforting in its brutality. She opened her eyes against it, the flames caressing her face. They did not phase her- fire had no effect on her, a power she'd been aware of since her early childhood. She tried to see where she was, unable to through the blaze. She stood, her clothing intact despite her predicament. She breathed in the smoke, her lungs filling fully, then exhaling it. She tasted the vapor as it rolled over her tongue and made her look like a dragon. She chuckled to herself, venturing through the flames until she found an unburned door. Light streamed from under it, yet it had no orange glow. It was not of flame. She placed her palm against the handle, turning it, and she realized where she was.

     Ashworth Manor.

     She stepped into the ashen 'snow' that lay around the building. She left a footprint in it, yet an even larger one of hers was at her back- one that would leave scars on this land for the rest of its numbered days. She turned, the flames towering above her. It was only through perspective that the flames were superior to her- Willow was the flame that never went out, the one that could never die. And so here she was, giving life to a new flame, a new chapter in her life that has been burnt into the wood of time. Only this time, the old Willow was gone. She was no longer the victim, the coward- she was the scourge, the reaper. She had repossessed something of hers- freedom.

     Willow heard a low moan come from the upstairs window, one she recognized well. She resisted the urge to call, to scream, "Who's laughing now?" But she hesitated. It was her adoptive father dying in the flames of her creation. She had every reason to thank him- for giving her the chance to create something so beautiful, yet it had a price. It had cost him his life, but that was a small sum for what followed. He was no more than a man who enjoyed hurting his children. One got knocked up and left to raise her child, one committed suicide and the last one killed him in a blaze of glory, quite literally.

     She had won justice for a fallen brother, relief for a sister, one less evil person for the world and a better life for herself. It was a win-win situation- she got to light a fire, she ridded the world of the human incarnate of the devil himself.

     Yet deep down she knew that her fire, her temper, came from somewhere even she did not know. Willow grew up in poverty with no mother and a workaholic father. Her mother had passed while giving birth to her, her father dying in a cave-in just three years after that.

     Willow's reminiscence on her past crimes was interrupted by a burst of discernment. Her mind flashed back to a certain day, one that had changed her life forever. It was the day she'd been taken to the convent, and without a sign, she became the nameless toddler she once was.

     The memory began as a woman in a cobalt capelet coat with gleaming jewelry held her hand as they approached the gate to the convent that Willow lived in when she was young. Willow, being the thief she was, had stolen many of the woman's rings and beads with her being none the wiser. Willow found thievery very easy, for nobody suspected the lively three-year-old to be a compulsive kleptomaniac. As the gothic metal gate creaked open, Willow looked around at the all-too-familiar shrubbery. At the time, she thought that they were beautiful. Now, she only saw them as huge stacks of kindling.

     "This is where you'll be staying, my dear." The woman had told her. A lady in a black robe approached her, doing a weird cross symbol with her hands, then leading Willow inside the huge building.

     Willow enjoyed the depictions of great lords and ladies in the stained glass panes of the 'chapel' as Mother Kristy called it. The sisters and other girls would always pray, but Willow never paid attention. She found it dumb, how the sisters and girls of the convent would praise someone they'd never met.