Child of Fire (EDITED)

Chapter One:

Quick explanation. I have decided to just start all over with COF. Trying to edit the original version with so many changes was becoming complicated. I also wanted to see how COF would do if people were able to read it fresh with no (hopefully) continuity errors. I have made a lot of changes to this story and I hope COF fans will agree with me that they are for the better.

~Hannah

"Thea!" my mother called opening the door. "You should have left fifteen minutes ago!"

I rolled over to look at her. My mother was told that she was old to have girls my sister and I's ages. I was twenty and my younger sister Myla was only fifteen. Our father worked dawn till dusk just to put food on the table. But we made due with what was given and were happy as we could be.

"I will help get your sister ready, now go!" she scolded but it sent her into a coughing fit. She was sickly and had been her entire life. Midwives say it's a miracle that she could even conceive one child let alone bear two healthy girls. As the days pass she grows sicker and weaker. Myla and I try to help out the best we can.

Myla attends a local day school, Minerva's School of Gifted Young Women, which supposedly teaches her how to be a proper woman and wife. I had attended from the age of ten to thirteen; I decided to quit once Myla had come of age to attend. The school was an expensive and unnecessary cost to two send two daughters. Myla had always been more attuned to those types of things that I had ever been. She would be the dutiful wife and I would be the old spinster that took care of my parents in their old age.

Our mother was beautiful, well before her sickness worsened causing her to wither away. She had beautiful blonde hair that looked like fresh straw and eyes that sparkled like periwinkles. My sister Myla was the spitting image of our mother in her youth. I on the other hand took after my father. I had dark scarlet red hair and green hazel eyes that were hinted with blue.

"Now Thea." Sighing I rolled from my small straw bed that laid directly on the hard packed dirt floor, Myla's bed was directly across from mine. Our small cottage was near the outskirts of the city, which some considered it the slums, but it was home and the fire roared warm.

While my mother tended to the house and knitted small articles of clothing to sell at market, I would drop off Myla off at school. Then I would either head to the woods that surround the city to scavenge for fruits and truffles and the occasional game if I was lucky or I would assist mother at home and help her to the market.

I quickly grabbed my usual woolen dress from a trunk at the far end of the room; it was a dark green that was beginning to fade. Mother said it brought out the green in my eyes. I tugged on my two other under skirts for extra warmth. It was the end of fall and it was beginning to become quite cold in the Redwood. I also tied an apron to my waist for stashing what I would discover. Exiting my room, Mother already had Jocelyn dressed and ready.

"Come on Myla," I smiled taking her hand. Myla was shy and kept to herself for the most part, she did not speak much not even to me or mother.

"Thea your cloak," My mother smiled, the light was still in her eyes even though it had left the rest of her body, and she tossed the cloak over my shoulders. It was a deep indigo; it had been hers, and her mother's before her. It was passed down from first-born daughter to first-born daughter. I adored it but I always noticed the envy in my sister's eyes.

"Thank you mother." I smiled thankfully. After that Myla and I were out the door. We had to hurry or she would be late for school. We carefully pushed our way through the thickening crowd. We finally reached the small red house that was Minerva's School for Gifted Young Women. I turned to Myla kneeling down placing my hands on her shoulders.