709, 1st of Ashan
It never mattered that they lived in what some of the richer folk from Scalvoris proper would say, or even those who hoarded coins like the fabled pirates, was squalor. It was comfortable. Her mother made dresses pretty enough that there was no need to buy any, they had food enough to feed two mouths, and on her birthday her mother never failed to get Emmy whatever her hearts desired. For some, knowing they had little meant they would ask for little or nothing, but she had never been that sort of child. Always appreciative but still spoiled enough not to care. Her mother never complained though because this was sort of an agreement between the two, the rest of arc only necessities were given, so on this one day she could have whatever her childish heart desired. When she was younger it was often sweets, small toys she envied of other children, makeup like her mother, extra dresses with so many additions they border on clownish, but as she'd grown she asked from small trinkets of jewelry and the like. It had likely struck her mother as strange when she'd asked for a cake, something she had not asked for in arcs.
"Just a cake?"
"I've been craving one, and Lena ate pie in front of us the other trial." Her mother had laughed but checked they had matches and a candle then went to put in a request to have the cake ready for the next trial.
It was then Emelia moved.
She had waited until the door had barely thudded shut to snatch the matches from the tabletop. Tomorrow they would need them but right now she needed one more. Every waking moment was plagued by the heat the simmered beneath her skin. Though some might call it the beginnings of Saun, she knew it wasn't. This was an old ache, one that went even deeper than her bones, one that brought up memories from the arc passed when she saw the truth of flames. Now her eyes nearly prickled with her inability to soothe the want, the fires of cooking or the warmth of the den in Cylus not enough to stop her veins from throbbing with unrestrained want. That very want had made her toss her dress in the fires of the hearth in a fit of frustration a season prior. The soothing scent of soot long since stolen from the dress and no longer an item of comfort of cleaning. It had been a senseless, basely satisfying conquest as now the fires of the house were only to be touched by her mother’s hands.
But candles on a cake? Her mother wouldn't deny her that even if she should have. Not so close to her birthday. That morning she had toyed with the idea of simply asking that her gift be the burning of what had once been a garden that neither of them tended but common sense reined its head before the boiling in her blood could take over. And the strangeness of her request seemed to make her mother forget she had been trying to hide the matches from her. It had occurred to her to learn to make her own kindling but last time she’d tried her nosey neighbors had reported the smoke from the small yard. The resulting lecture had kept her away from any attempts for several trials.
Now there was nothing to restrain her and the urge was strong enough with just the taste of victory her hands shook. There was a lightheaded, weightlessness to her body as Emmy made her way out the back. Everything beneath her finger tips and bare feet was fuzzy, like the buzzing in her ears, her memories haunted by the crackling of flames as if they'd already happened. Only the crunch of dying, decaying floral beauty brought her from feeling like she was drowning in herself to the hyper aware pricking across her skin. Gooseflesh rose along her arms, puckered until it felt like her skin was pulled taunt against her bones and they'd rip through her skin at any moment.
Then she struck the match.
And the world around her was in flames too.
It would almost be a shame for the girl to drop it but she couldn't imagine the world on fire and it was too beautiful to pass up. Something she could only hope to emulate but it was the sting on her finger tips that finally tipped the match from her hands. Her entire body flinching back even as her heart lurched toward it. She licked the tips of her fingers and watched as it hit the dried plants below. Whatever Emelia had anticipated--that? Was not it.
At first it had been a small ember, more pitiful than her hearth and just as disappointing. But then, then the rest of the debris caught fire and what had been small suddenly roared to life, the heat striking her face hard enough to singe her brow bones. Yet she couldn't look or step away. It was as if she too was on fire and it was glorious. Rather than step back she stepped toward it, the tension that had sat between her shoulders the past seasons finally unraveling to the point the girl could almost cry. It was like coming home after a long day or finishing the dress her and her mother worked on, it was so many things.
And she couldn't tear her eyes away from it.
