I first saw her standing in a pile of ashes.
Her face was smudged, her hair blowing in the wind.
She was wearing dirty capris and knee-high socks. Her shirt may have been white at one point; now it was a mural of stains, sweat, and dirt. She was holding some of the ashes in her hands, letting the wind lift them, letting them fly free.
And she was laughing.
Her name was Lyria Maylie Thomas. She was the daughter of a spy, but her father was hardly around, and her mother was killed as a result of her father's work. Because of this, Lyria grew up long before her time. The first day I saw her, she had already left home. Neither of us think her father really noticed.
Lyria hated her father. Of course, he didn't know that; he couldn't have. Otherwise, he never would have let her hang around him while he was home. She told me he thought her to be a simple and impudent child, which allowed her to hover around him when he was working and learn all she could. Once she had what she needed, Lyria took off. She told me living on her own wasn't much different than living with her father. It was the same thing day in and day out: wake up, scavenge for food, steal what necessities and extras she could, and find a safe place to sleep for the night.
When I first saw Lyria, her father was slipping through her fingers.
Ashes.
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I found out later what had happened. Lyria's father wasn't on the side of the war that she originally thought he was.
Lyria's father was a spy for the enemy. He conspired to have his wife killed.
And he burned her lifeless body to ashes.
Lyria was told that she was burned by the enemy. Despite how much she hated her father, she never would have guessed the truth of this statement. She never would have guessed that her father was the enemy.
She did know some things, however, and some of what she knew she told me. Here's what I know:
Her father loved fire.
Lyria's father was fascinated with flames. We always used to make puns about how he played with fire. Lyria would always start, "When you play with fire..." and I would finish, "....You're gonna get burned!"
Lyria's father definitely endangered his own interests.
Because the thing he loved so much eventually became his undoing.
The government found out about Lyria's father's traitorous ideals about the same time that Lyria did. She was running to him, to confront him, to yell and scream and accuse and wonder if he even cared, if he even remembered her name. But when she finally found him, he was standing in a clearing, staring up at the turbulent sky, surrounded by government officials. Rather than head out into the fray, Lyria hid in a patch of bushes near where she had been standing. Her dirty clothes, dusty face, and unkempt hair, along with some skills she learned for her much loathed father helped her to blend right in as she watched.
The officials struck her father again and again, yelling things like "Traitor! Renegade! Double agent! Rat!" and Lyria whispered every insult right along with them. But not once did her father utter a sound. He stood there, staring up at that stormy sky.
Most of the men stepped away, but one was left directly in front of the spy. He was holding something in left hand: a tiny flame, a lit match.
The official brought the fire close to Lyria's seditious father, and Lyria watched her father's glowing body turn to ashes, while he still stared up at the dark clouds in the sky.
Lyria and I talked about those clouds later, how it seemed that even the sky believed he deserved his fate, refusing to rain on the growing flame.
Some officials watched the man burn, to make sure the blaze didn't get too out of control; but eventually they dispersed, and Lyria emerged into the clearing.
That's when I arrived to hear her story, and saw her for the first time.
Standing in a pile of ashes.
