Fireborn

Chapter One: Wishing Rocks

Agren remembered. There, in the dark, it was so easy to remember. Every shadow seemed like one of the strangers that watched. Every sound like the faint whispers.

She did not think she would ever forget that day. That day that brought her here. It had happened just over a year before, and yet everything was almost excruciatingly fresh. All those staring people. That look in her mother's eyes.    

Agren looked up as another drop of water landed on her head, stinging her skin with icy claws. The small opening in the rock provided her with some sense of time. It was dark, but still day.

She stood up, peering through the gap. It was a few feet above her, but she could make out the grayness of the sky. It was cold. She could feel a faint pull of the wind coming through the stone of the caves. Cold, and smelling like rain. Another thin raindrop fell, landing on her face and streaking down her dusty cheeks like a fresh tear.

The grayness of the sky was like those eyes. Those deep eyes that seemed to change with every shift in the light and clouds. Agren had never expected to see those eyes. Chi'gaul Windborn, who lead the Thesronae people, would never concern herself with the dusty girl from Ironwood.

No one concerned themselves with the girl who ran around making deliveries for Kalla Redbane, a master jeweler. To them, she wasn't Agren, she was Kalla's daughter.

It had been cold on that day too. The day her mother had taken her to Highgate to sell her bejeweled adornments. Agren had been waiting there, watching the rain fall, when a beam of sunlight sliced through the clouds and pierced the crystal on the pillar of Mother's Rock.

There was a distant rumble of thunder, bringing her back to reality. She turned, walking the tunnel that went to the higher location. If she walked the tunnel that looked like it went lower, it would curve up steadily and bring her up to a high point. It was the darkest location, but it would also be the driest if the winding caves were flooded.

As far as she knew, she was the last one still in the Wishing Rocks. She couldn't leave until she'd had her Sight, her vision of the future.

She was one of several to reach the age of sixteen that season, and they had all been sent to Wishing Rocks for the Thesronae people's rite of passage. They would wait, surviving off of the water in the cave's streams and the fish and rats that made their home in the dark until they saw a brief glimpse of their future, a Sight. So while she waited, she remembered.

The light had been blinding, shimmering gold. The misty air almost looked cleaved away. The crystal broke the light into three beams. It shone, striking the gemstone eyes of the statues surrounding the pillar. The statues were carved of white stone, showing the forms of the Three Mothers. The three dragons had been carved to take the form of what they represented.

Mother Sapphire and her lightning bolts and watery wings. Mother Amethyst with her skeletal features and roses sprouting from her scales. Mother Garnet, sculpted like crumbling rock with flaming wings. They were the legends, the guardians, the three powerful spirits who watched over the world and its people.

Storm, balance, the land, it was all supposed to be very symbolic, according to mentors and teachers. Agren had never really paid much attention to the carvings before.

The rough stone walls surrounding her were like the sculpture of Mother Garnet, who chose her.

Somewhere down the cave, she heard the dripping of water landing on the stone. The rain had been falling then, too. But the light hadn't faded. It seemed to glow brighter as the red gemstones in Mother Garnet's rocky eye sockets lit up.

Agren had felt the beam pierce her, strike her heart. She had been too stunned to move, no idea what to say, sure that it was a mistake. That's when she saw them staring. Eyes, turning to her. The startled seamstress who dropped her fabrics; five children who stood there, gawking; Arid, holding his cat and nothing coming out of his mouth for once in his life.