On the night that it started, I had no idea that in only a few months, my life would change forever.
Looking back, I can't believe how easily I dismissed the signs, because the truth is, people will see what they want to see, and I created for myself a perfect world that would never be. I saw what I wanted to see.
-----
A wind whispering of the end of spring hissed through the clearing. Grandma whipped around, and I followed her eyes just in time to glimpse a bushy tail dart through the undergrowth.
"How much depends on a feral cat?" Grandma murmured.
"Hmm?" I wondered if I'd heard her right. Maybe she was talking about the cat's kittens hidden away somewhere. But Grandma didn't reply, and so we fell back into silence.
"You'll start the fire, won't you, Amita?"
My grandmother gave me my middle name. Amita—it means loyal.
"Mhm." I nodded as I struck the match. I'd never shied away from the flames, no matter how close they leapt to my copper-brown skin. I stoked the fire as if I were stroking a cat—waiting infinitely to see if it would bite. In the dusk, the twirling cinders looked almost eerie.
"Don't get too close," she warned. As she swept by, a gust of wind barraged my face. The fire flared taller, brighter, as if the cat had suddenly grown fangs it was about to sink into my flesh.
I rolled my eyes. "Yes, Grandma."
She whipped around, her skirt lashing the ground, and the golden flames leapt towards me. "See?" she smiled. "Best be careful." She teased.
I giggled and the cat laid feather-soft paws on my skin. The fire whispered across my abdomen, leaving laughing embers in its wake. I felt their summer warmth like a raging furnace, but the flames didn't burn me. I felt them like laughter dragging along my bones—yet they hadn't touched me. That was strange.
I brought my hands closer to the leaping fire. Someone was watching me. I looked up through my heavy eyelashes to see Grandma frowning pointedly at me. "What did I say, child?"
I sighed. "Sorry, Grandma."
I didn't mention how my fingers smarted in pain as I yanked them away. I guess I mistook the tiger for the cat. It kind of hurt when it decided to crunch its jaws down on my hand.
But I could swear that the first time, the fire truly hadn't touched me. It had glanced off my skin, completely harmless. Unless that pesky big cat also knew how to spin visions.
I tossed another log into the fire, which gobbled it up; I poked at it once or twice. Then I retreated to the shadows.
-----
My grandma's voice flowed mellow and smooth, like the infinite thickness of honey paired with the calm, steady rippling of still water in a forest pond.
"As legend would have it, he and his unearthly servants were never seen again," she finished her gripping tale, oblivious to the fascinated faces of the assembled children.
"Those creatures should belong in hell!" squeaked an excitable young boy. Grandma shook her head at him, admonishing him for the careless use of the name of the dark god—Varyx's—realm. The realm that had no true name, the realm of darkness and death. I remembered her closing her eyes, a mask of calm settling on her previously animated face. I remembered smiling blandly, exhaustion tugging on my eyelids, as she got up. Her long skirts swept behind her as she picked her way back to the Chief's Villa nearby, though she walked as gracefully as if her eyes were open.
I had always admired the way she could move like that without ever tripping over the haphazard pebbles littered about—Grandma sidestepped them without a single break in her step. I used to wonder aloud sometimes if she had a magical secret ability to float above the ground and glide across the earth, but Father always replied that it was simply elegance honed by years of being a respected, unbreakable High Chieftess.
I know better now. I ignored the markers. Chose to ignore them. I chose, and that made it that much harder to get up when I fell. I chose to wrap myself in an illusion of safety that would never truly be, a barrier made of only dust and cobwebs, and when I fell, there was nothing to stop me.
Grandma needed her rest after telling tribal stories to the village children late into the night, but it was up to me to escort them back to their homes, which, needless to say, took a while. I will never understand why they paid pre-school teachers to sing nursery rhymes to toddlers, but then, oh, it's campfire time, we're just going to leave, have fun telling stories for the children until you're dead on your feet! Herding children was an arduous job; they could sniff out the slightest trivial difference in how I said their names and teased each other (not to mention me) mercilessly.
Thankfully for my former self, there were a few parents who actually managed to raise their kids properly.
"Arla!" I called out. A midget of a girl with beautiful chocolate skin miraculously appeared in front of me.
"Yes, Chieftess?" she answered smoothly.
"You don't need to call me Chieftess, you know. I'm not even of age yet," I replied. It was a throwaway comment, but it set my heart pounding—back then. In a few months would be my Agecoming ceremony—a traditional ritual where very rarely, the new adult was never seen or spoken of again. It was these terrifying few cases that made me fear the Agecoming, though my father was never disturbed after the incidences where the sixteen-year-olds disappeared. As if one of our community, one of us, hadn't just disappeared without a trace. As if their names hadn't been practically wiped from memory.
Chieftess. The title had done nothing to stop the fall.
"Yes, Chieftess," Arla intones.
"Seriously. Call me Amita," I insisted. Semantics, really. It did not make a difference whether I was a queen or a peasant.
"Yes, Chieftess Amita."
A little too properly, it seemed.
"Whatever. Arla, do you know the girl who lives over the hill in the nearest residential block? Black hair, dark blue eyes?"
"Yes, Chieftess. That's Viola. Do you need me to look after the others while you take her back?"
"Yes please, Arla. That would be super helpful." I kept my voice steady as always, but inside I sagged with relief, fearing there would be a riot otherwise. No, that wasn't right. If Arla wasn't there, then by the time I got back, at least two explosions would've occurred and there would be a minimum of five children bawling their eyes out on the ground. That was a rule.
"Viola?" I shouted, sighing internally as I attempted to control the teeming mass of unruly kids fighting, squealing and generally causing trouble.
"It's Vivi, not Viola!" The diva stuck her tongue out as she then went back to playing chopsticks with the boy next to her.
See? Little kids. "Vivi?"
Wearing the single most disgruntled face I had seen in a while; she pushed her hair behind her shoulder with an exaggerated movement worthy of a drama queen. The position I held was one of power, one that was meant to command respect (emphasis on meant to), but as soon as they were out of their parents' sights, it was like they were imbued with doses of some sort of craziness drug that exceeded the normal (non-existent) limit by about ten million times.
Still rolling her eyes, she followed me up the grassy hill. She trekked painstakingly slowly, so slowly I wondered if she was doing it on purpose. As soon as I dropped her off, I jogged back down the hill, aching feet breaking into a run as the curve of the land flattened out. Kaleveh was big, but why, why did they all have to live so far away from each other!
The walks across my homeland are nothing now. If anything, they make me long more for something I might never see again.
"Narreta!" I shouted. "Narreta-Kayani Zarramere, come here right this moment!" I sighed at a girl with a ribbon of black hair running off over the hills. "Where is your brother?"
My eleven-year-old cousin shook her curls at me and poked her tongue out. "I don't know where Ricco went. Probably snogging his girlfriend behind a bush somewhere." I finally caught up to Narreta, my hands seeming to burn hotter than they should, slick with sweat.
I thought nothing of it.
I thought it was just my body releasing the heat bottled up from the campfire, burning off the inner fuel from chasing Narreta over the hills.
I thought wrong.
"He better not have gone to stay at Maevy's. Your father wants him at home."
"Does it look like I care?"
"I know you care what your brother is doing, little panda," I hastily wiped the sweat beading my palms on my pants and scooped her up in my arms, grunting a bit at her weight, setting her giggling like a child. "Come on, let's go home."
Narreta giggled as I tickled her again. I spun her around, her holding onto me as we twirled dizzyingly, and set her down on the grass.
She laughed, the sound merry, joyful and childishly free, and we bounced over the hills hand in hand, headed for the ocean, chatting every bit of the way.
If only that image was one that had lasted.
Author's note: if you are able to, please comment, vote and share if you like it so far! I love constructive feedback and I want to be able to use it to improve get out there as a writer.
What do you think is going to happen at her Agecoming ceremony?