Girl of Flame

Into the Snow

    Children with crystal wings fluttered around, licking cones of ice, laughing, and playing in the snowy bushes, filled with black roses. Blanche had once been one of those playful children, had laughed and giggled just like them...

     But now she was stuck inside, surrounded by fires, wrapped in a blanket, and fed hot coals. It wasn't crude or cruel to her people. She was just so precious...they needed to smother what she enjoyed.

    The ice in her hair was dimming away into a red. Her cool gray eyes were heating up into a golden amber. And she was changing into something she'd never believe she could. Her mother had tried to convince the king that she wasn't an ember, but after a year, the telltale signs started to shine brightly.

     Blanche hated herself for being an ember. Most treated her as a goddess, worshipped her, but that wasn't what she wanted in life. All she wanted was to be normal, and now she was locked up in the king's castle, followed wherever she went, surrounded in guards, soldiers to protect her, priests and pilgrims to worship, children to lay snowflowers at her feet.

          She still didn't want that! Not for one second did she ever want that life for herself. Sitting back down, she closed her sunshine lashes, once a pure white. Longing for her mother, she softly wept. Only two weeks, and they were already killing her...

    Yet. Yet. She could never go outside ever again, or she'd die. Something worse could happen. She could be kidnapped and thrown into the Heart of the Hearth fire as a sacrifice. Heart of the Hearth fire...

That reminded her something, that cheered her up a bit. The fire! The only time she'd be let out was during Heart Hearth. When all of the folk of the ice and snow gathered round at the cavernous caves, seven of them to be exact, lit with a blue fire for cleansing, a green fire for growth, an orange fire for bravery, a red fire for love, a violet fire for wit, and lastly, but not least, a golden fire for purity, wealth, and power.

     She'd be the first to attend to the fires, the council and king hoping it would awaken her powers. She didn't want it to, but Blanche reminded herself that the caves were far away, and it would take several days to travel there. She'd be let out of the suffocating heat! She'd be free!

        And maybe, Blanche thought, she could escape. She'd rather freeze than slowly rot away in the castle, locked up for the rest of her life, until her powers awakened.