56 Creation

Where was a fire when one needed it?

Brightise couldn't believe she was yearning for fire so much, not after what had happened to her sister during that school fire and the way Syd had died a few weeks ago. Fire had only been a bad omen in her life so far.

She wasn't going to cry though. There was no point in it. She doubted the Queen would take pity on her if she cried loud enough and open the door and accept her for the weak coward that she was.

The Amazons were not cowards. They were headstrong like the Queen, reckless and vicious like Zelna, kind and weird like Neleah, but they were certainly not cowards.

Brightise wished she was more like them, but she was not. Two days were not enough to turn a villager into a warrior.

As the hours went by, time moving slowly towards her inevitable death, she felt like screaming. And why shouldn't she? What was stopping her? It's not like she was going to live through this and have the Amazons make fun of her for it for the rest of her life. This was the rest of her life. These precious, awful few hours or days that lay ahead of her were her last.

Brightise couldn't take it anymore. She opened her mouth wide and screamed. She screamed until she felt her lungs shake with the power of her voice, until the room echoed with her desperation, until...

Suddenly, Brightise felt something snap in the back of her throat.

It all happened within fractions of a second. A burning sensation built in her throat and then exploded, moving up her mouth and exiting along with her scream in the form of a big, bright orange flame.

Brightise staggered back in shock and closed her mouth.

For a split second, before the flame was extinguished, the room had been bright with light again.

Brightise was breathing hard. Had she just done what she thought she had?

She took a long, deep breath in an effort to calm her racing heart and then opened her mouth and screamed again, this time even harder than the last.

The feeling in her throat intensified and a bigger, hotter flame exploded through her mouth and vanished in the air.

Brightise started laughing like a maniac.

She had discovered her power. She could breathe f*cking fire.

She didn't need the Queen's candle. She had all the fire she wanted inside her.

Vibrating with new-found energy, she turned towards the door she had failed to burn before, opened her mouth and burned it to the ground.

The door frame was still ablaze when she saw the Queen stand right outside it in shock.

"What did you do?" she asked Brightise in a hoarse whisper. She looked out of breath, as if she had run there as soon as she had smelled the smoke.

Brightise shrugged. "I did not cheat. You did not give me this fire. I created it on my own."