Obsidian

Part I | Chapter I

Part I | Charred

 

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Chapter I 

In which there is stone

and a crooked smile.

 

When they met, it was midnight. The stars in the sky were a smattering of metallic freckles, pinpricks of silver on a cushion of deep blue velvet. 

The boy was on the floor, head pushed back, gasping for air. He had been trying to hold his own against a gang of older boys, their shoulders rippling with muscles from working in the fields. His own thin, wiry arms could do nothing as they shoved him against the wall again.

They had wanted to take his belongings; he had refused. They had beaten him up.

The girl watched until they finally walked away, the boy's canvas rucksack sitting snugly on one of their backs. She watched the boy warily - for he looked like a typical civilian of Farres, with his black-brown hair, cropped short and now matted with blood, and his sun-browned skin, spotted with darkening bruises.

She sighed and was about to walk away when he spoke.

“Hey, you.” She spun around, muscles tensed.

“Help me up.”                                                                                        

Soft brown met hard blue-grey, and she stared at the stranger - this bruised, beaten-up boy with chocolate eyes and a crooked smile.

“Me?” She tried not to sound hopeful, naïve, as she crossed her arms and looked at him suspiciously. The boy's mouth curled into a lopsided grin, a chip on his front tooth out in full view - from the recent fight or not, she didn't know.

“See anybody else around here, Stone-face?” The girl scowled and on impulse, strode forward and pulled the boy up roughly. His hand was coarse, callused.

"Thanks." He said it casually, leaning on his side. The girl nodded quickly, doing her best to keep her face blank.

"Silas. My name's Silas."

She blinked in surprise and turned to him, looking into his hopeful eyes - one puffy and blackened and the other warm and welcome. Then her mouth tilted up – only slightly – at the sides.

"...You can call me Cintha."

 

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There was water, just plain water, the glass surface of the lake. Water, the land, and the sky, and nothing-

Thunder. 

Lightning.

It was flashing, rumbling and he was scared where was his father where was he why wasn't he stopping it the lightning the light the flashes and now fire fire fire FIRE everywhere where where was his father what was that smell burning burning BURNING screams burning screams and it was hot hot so hot HOT-

"Oi." She was shaking him. "Wake up, Silas."

The boy let out a hoarse groan and batted Cintha's hand away, flopping down onto the dusty floor again. He pressed against the cool ground, trying to calm his trembling hands, his shivering body.