Fire's Flame

Chapter 8~Blisters of rage~

Heating iron with fire, and making weapons with a hammer that's what she was good at. Sticky strands of her curly golden brown hair came loose from her not-so-tight low ponytail and fell in front of her face. Her cheeks were smeared with burnt charcoal and her hands were covered with blisters and cuts. Blisters that were caused by friction. The friction between her hand and the rough hammer. Blisters caused by the burning , the burning caused by the hot iron, and the fire she was working with.

Her hands were not soft, they were rather rough. Her hands were not made to pick beautiful flowers, but to make weapons. They were made to carry a heavy axe, they were made to shoot arrows. They were made for fighting. Unlike the other girls whose hands were made to be held by their beloved. Their hands were softer than petals while her hands were rougher than a tree trunk.

She wasn't surprised at the softness of their hands. While she had to work with weapons, they braided each other's hair or styled it whatsoever. But, that did not bother her, not at all. Because simply she did not want her hands to be soft and she loved working in the smithy. She wasn't complaining even with people not accepting her.

In fact, she was in her happiest state. She had Erik, she had Freedom and she felt completely free. She felt like she had achieved eudaimonia. And she hoped it would stay that way forever. But little did she know that this was all ephemeral.

The clanging sounds filled the smithy as she continued to hammer on the blade of a sword she was crafting. With her left hand gripping the metal hilt firmly, stabilizing the sword on the table. With her right hand, she held the hammer as she kept hammering the blade.
Along with the clanging of the hammer and the sword, a reddish, fiery color came to the tip of the sword.

Although she was fully focused on the sword she was making, she could still feel the judgemental stares outside the smithy.
She could still hear the unpleasant comments and whispers. Every person that passed by that smithy English soldier or Scottish Citizen, was bound to either stare at her judgmentally or make a nasty remark. She began to hate the fact that their smithy was as open as a street market.

Yet she did not raise her head, she did not avert her gaze from the sword. She kept the rage inside her heart. The rage that you could see painted on her furrowed brows. The rage that you could feel has filled her to the point where she did not realize half of her hair escaping from her ponytail and falling in front of her eyes, so she could not see clearly. The rage you could hear in the loud pounding of the hammer on the iron sword.

Rage, rage, rage that was all she could see, feel and hear. Yet she managed to bottle up that rage in her heart. At that moment she discovered another blister. A blister that was not on her skin, but in a much more sensitive place, a place where she had been wounded far too often. Her heart.

For her own good, this rage eventually came to a rather halt. When she heard a little girl begging for mercy.
Fire's eyes immediately shot up to find the little girl. It wasn't long before she caught sight of a girl with long wavy  chocolate brown hair  and dark brown eyes . The girl was dressed in an expensive dress so she was certainly not poor. Fire's grip on the hammer tightened when she saw three boys which seemed to be the same age as Fire. surrounding the young girl. This scene sure did ring a bell.
She let go of the hammer and reached for her purified axe, which was about to get desecrated.

She rushed towards them with smoke pouring from her ears. When she finally reached them, she didn't hesitate for a split second, before she grabbed one of them and pinned him against the wall of a random cottage.
The perfectly curved blade of her axe made contact with his neck. He gulped in fear, but he tried to hide his fear by smiling at her sarcastically.

"Amused William?" she hissed with furrowed brows. William was a Scottish eight-teen year-old who had a hobby of bullying little girls.
"Looks like the rumors are true, you murdered two teenagers five years ago," he said with his head held high, exposing his pale neck.

Automatically, she pressed the axe against his neck, causing his skin to curl against the blade. She stared deadly into his ice-gray eyes. People watched and only observed. No one dared to mess with Fire; they knew what she was capable of. People only dared to stare at her judgmentally or comment on her actions under their breath. While William was new to the village, he did not know who Fire was truly. Even the English soldiers stood in their armor with their swords in hand, but they wouldn't dare use their swords against Fire's axe. So they watched like the others.

"Oh yes, and I did it when I was only eleven. Do you really want to see what I can do now?!" She fought the urge not to slay him.
His sarcastic expression fell and his cockiness was completely gone. "Answer me or I will give you the honor of my axe!" She hissed. "No..." No was the only word he managed to get out. "That's what I thought," she said in a much calmer voice.
She released him aggressively and he backed away and ran .

She knelt in front of the young girl and took out a pocket knife from the pocket of her skirt. "Here, take it to protect yourself," she said, "I-I don't know how to use it." She stuttered nervously. Fire could tell by the girl's accent that she was English. But that didn't make any difference. She was innocent of what the English government does and she certainly didn't deserve what those bastards were doing to her.

"Trust me you will once you need to" she remembered how she didn't know how to use a dagger but still managed to do much with it."Thank you...Di-did you kill two teenagers ?" she asked nervously.

Fire smiled at her, then tilted her head up, revealing a scar under her chin. "See this mark, I got it when I was your age. And if I didn't know how to protect myself, I'd be dead by now. So to answer your question, yes but I had to."

The little girl hugged Fire tightly, "You're my savior..." she murmured against her neck. Fire hugged her protectively and sighed against her chocolate waves. "Trust me you don't need saving..."