Now, We Burn

Chapter 3 | Ember

Chapter 3
| Ember |

"I can't believe you," Eliza was saying, her jawbone hard under her pale skin. "I just really can't."

Ember rolled her eyes. "Just hark off Eliza," she said, stepping over more building rubble. "You're not my mom, you know."

"Language," Eliza snapped, her dark eyebrows creasing into a deeper frown. "And if mom were here she would have said the exact same thing."

"Sure," Ember mumbled, rolling her eyes again. Eliza had been grilling her about going to the No-Man's market ever since they had climbed down the building, and now Ember just wanted her sister to go away.

"I hope you have a good explanation planned for dad," Eliza continued, jaw still hard.

Ember blocked her out. She couldn't listen to her sister's scoldings any more or she might explode like she had a few minutes ago, earning more reprimands form Eliza for the string of profanities she had spewed.

But now Ember couldn't yell, she was smarter than that. They were in the wastelands, where the ground was still scorched, garbage and debris littered the ground, the long burned skeletons of trees still standing, ghostly against the sky. Where desperate, hungry people waited, ready for the chance to slit someone's throat just for a mouthful of food. Only the desperate came to the wastelands; the loners, people without a gang to protect them, and those who no longer cared if they lived or died.

"Are you even listening to me?" Eliza's words cut through Ember's thoughts.

"No," Ember said, the fury building inside her. "I'm crussing not."

Eliza glared at her, and Ember felt a trickle of satisfaction.

"Fine," Eliza snapped, her pace quickening. "Don't listen, don't care. I'm only trying to help you, to help Dad. But obviously you're too childish and thickheaded to think of anyone but yourself and your idiotic ideas of freedom."

Ember grit her teeth, trying to hold back the angry words bubbling at the surface of her lips.

But she failed. "I dont give a crussing dragon scarf what you think Eliza," She exploded. "You think I need someone to take care of me, but your harking wrong. The only reason I'm not gone is because of Dad. And you know what? I don't even know why I'm doing that, I don't want to be a harking healer, I don't care what you, or Dad want."

Eliza's pale cheeks flushed with anger, but she didn't say anything.

Ember clenched her fists hard. wanting to yell and scream at Eliza, for anything and everything. But she didn't. They had reached their home, if that was what you could call it.

The shelter was made of broken pieces of metal torn from the side of fallen hovercrafts, ripped plastic covering the doorway, and broken branches tied together to make the frame. It was rough, but much better than the last shelter they had had a few years ago before it had been burned in a dragon fire.

Ember watched as Eliza stalked into the shelter, her anger showing in every line of her body.

Ember kicked a lump of burned stone, muttering curses under her breath before sitting down on a rusted tin bucket that her father usually sat on while making dinner.

Ember's insides were a mess.

She wished she hadn't yelled at Eliza, she wished she didn't have to be who her dad wanted her to be. She wished her mom was alive, she wished she didn't have to live with her family anymore.

She remembered when she had been younger she had asked her dad why they weren't in a gang, with tears streaming down her face because she was so hungry.