Rosin

Prologue- The Blaze

The strange thing about burns is that they do not bleed. You would have thought that since the skin gets stripped away by flames that all the blood underneath just comes gushing out, but no. The heat actually helps the injury. It warms up all the oozy stuff that was previously underneath your skin and gloops it all together, like a kid mixing glitter and glue into a slimy, clumping mess.

Aria was thinking of the picture her son had drawn not three days ago as she looped the bandage around her friend's arm. Aspen had been very proud of that drawing. It was a drawing of her- of Aria- standing with a bunch of purple flowers in her hand. Lots of floating love hearts hovered around her, most of them slanting off to one side. Underneath were three words scrawled in that elegant way all children write letters:

BEsT MuM eVr

That drawing-Aria had spaghetti strings of yellow hair and a frightfully wonky smile, but what more could a person expect from an eight-year-old's drawing? It had melted her heart when he gave it to her, carefully pointing out each part, every detail.
The problem was that her son Aspen had decided to use real flower petals for the flowers in her hand.

That's what this looked like. Shredded petals made soggy by glue, seeping something moist and sticky, hardening at the side. Petals and glue.
"I could do this faster myself." The woman huffed. She was currently stretching her seared arm beside her so Aria had enough room to wind the bandage around the injury. And, as she insistently reminded anyone unfortunate enough to be in the cavern, was not happy about doing so.
Aria lifted her eyes for a moment to glare at Ellery. Her cheeks were stained black from the ash, like she had smudged charcoal all over herself. Only her eyes had escaped a dusting from the smoke- they were their natural colour. That claret red to match the shade of the wings on her back. Such lovely wings, totally devoid of any sharpness, in a way that the four pieces of membrane just sort of flowed over each other, a set of flowing red folds on Ellery's back. But they too were sheeted with so much muck and dirt that the colour beneath was hardly visible.
Aria began the knot that would seal the bandage. Loosely- you had to be careful with burns. Tying this too tightly would be counter-productive. Squishing all this burnt skin into the liquid it was seeping- no. No, no, that wasn't the way to fix this.
As her fingers worked, her eyes flicked up again, "Don't go back out there, El."

Ellery had been looking at the floor, where the glow of the flames was making her shadow dance over the wood. Now, she looked up.
"Why not?" The Winged's voice came.
Aria bristled at the easiness of the tone, "Don't be ridiculous, you know why."
"I'll do this myself if you're going to be a mum-"
"No-" Aria grabbed her wrist when Ellery began to jerk away. "Don't."
There was a moment where she was certain Ellery would pull herself away and fly into the heart of the fires once more. She had that look in her face, that impatient pinch between her eyebrows... but she just shrugged in the end. She shrugged in such an Ellery way- as if the forest wasn't an inferno outside this cavern, as if her arm wasn't coated in her own boiled blood, a red already pooling through the white bandage- as if everything was perfectly fine.
Ellery lifted and dropped her skinny shoulders. A nonchalant shrug. Then went right back to staring at the flames.

The two women sat in silence while Aria finished the knot. Her own face was clean of soot or marks, unlike Ellery. At first there had been sleep-bags under her eyes when her husband shook her awake, but they had long since faded. How many hours ago had that been? Four, five? It seemed to her that days had passed, with the sound of crackling wood acting as a new silence. She wondered if the dawn would be creeping over the canopy yet. Maybe. Though, there would be no way to know if it was. The sky was gone now.

"You're done." Aria murmured, a quiet sound that echoed in the wooden cave. It was reluctant. Because, just as Aria knew she would, Ellery stood up the very second her bandage was secure. She didn't examine her wounded arm- she had enough trust in Aria to know it would be sealed properly. But she stood for a moment, motionless, thinking. In that quiet, Aria could clearly hear the snaps and sputters of the forest outside. Her home. Being gradually burnt to the ground. The fire.