Ashes

Paige Ignis has always loved fire, the crackling flames licking away the timber’s lifeline. Its fingers, strangling the logs as the smoky tentacles of its remains struggled to reach the sunlight; polluting the evening atmosphere. The stifling heat of the Inferno never sent flares of discomfort to her senses, even less than half a metre away she felt absurdly content. Paige worshipped the element of the bonfire, lived for its blaze, wondered at its depths, its creation and origin. Yet she couldn’t stand ash, her joy only lasted until the final few embers curled away to tiny sparks, then specks, before dissolving.

However, once the eventual spitting had died away leaving only ashen, pallid remains, it was as if she had been overcome with a flash of schizophrenia, see shadows in its mould. Shaking uncontrollably, in a state of shock; with no ability to rise to consciousness. In this way she’d be withheld, no one having the nerve to move her distressed form. Her body would be frozen rigid with her features distorted into a grimace of personal demons and haunting memories. Hidden from the rest of civilization, with no way to extract or view her locked data; corroding her slowly from the inside.

So why might you ponder do the people around her let her near a furnace, let her stare into the blaze, well its quite simple, they don’t stay with her long enough to care or be warned. To learn from their mistakes. It’s not easy being an orphan especially, when every carer she’s ever been with goes up in flames, literally. So the real questions are what is her addiction to fire? What nightmares tie her to ashes? How has she survived every arson she’s been in when the building and inhabitants have been reduced to dust? Why isn’t she on any state files? An unearthly child who rose from the ashes 10 years ago. A 13 year old with controlling emotions and a unique ability of survival, filled with suspicious affects. But what is this ability and where did it come from?