( I've really enjoyed reading other's people's histories so I thought i might give it a go for Nox, all comments welcome)


The gift of fire

Numb. Everything was numb. Huddled as she was at the base of a towering pine, she cowered, burying herself deeper and deeper into the sap incrusted bark. Beyond shivering she simply hugged her knees to her chest, with the desperate hope of preserving some of her valuable heat. Her fingers were beyond numb, her toes, nose, checks, even her mind had succumbed to the numbness. Logical though no longer survived, common sense too had abandoned her long ago, only images swirled in her mind’s eye.

The fine wooden grains of the table…Running aimlessly…her body held down by multiple sweaty hands…Trees upon trees upon trees…The goading on…Tripping over a gnarled root, her hands pressing into the damp earth to stop her fall…The silence…Her breaths - short, painful…the cool blade pulling muscle apart as it bite down to her shoulder blade…Pain…Anger. Overwhelming anger. It seemed to be thrown out form her, to emit from her, all directed at her capturers. Cries of shock, of horror, of pain as their fazes saw their own hands. Hands that released her as their owners, dumbstruck, stared at the yellow patches that seemed to crawl up their stubby arms.

Her mind reluctantly came back, returning meant pain, yet it did so. Her eyes managed to look up, only to realise the sight of her cut knee was far more comforting than the drapes of shadows which hung between the trees. Her lungs screamed with every intake of breath as the freezing air entered her body only to be expelled as a thin mist before her. With the return of thought the numbness began to lift, and so the pain blossomed out from her chest. She made the unwise decision of trying to flex her fingers. Before they even managed to clench, tremendous pain exploded from her once numb hand. Unknown to her, was that her finger tips had taken on a ghostly, bloodless pallor, and if not warmed would soon become a tinged pale blue.

She would have whimpered if it hadn’t been for the fear that they were after her. More images briefly passed before her eyes. Flickering torches in between the forest’s silhouette. A backwards glance – the sight of the light, gruff voices, and the bark of the hounds – run from the light, it had been her only thought. Blindly running into the embrace of the night. Only stopping when her legs had collapsed beneath her, only a few metres form where she was now. Her fears, however, had not yet materialized; no torches re-emerged among the trees, no voices, none of the hunters. The hunters, who she had once called teacher, baker, smithy, uncle, aunt, came not.

At first she had tried to warm her fingers against her cheeks, but then her cheeks no longer held any warmth. Soon after that the numbness had crept in. She knew she was dying, she could feel it in every sinew, ligament and bone, and they all cried out for her to do something, anything. Yet her mind, in which the numbness till cowered, resend that this wasn’t so bad. Her wondering gaze had become transfixed upon a small pile of pine needles that lay just in front of her feet. Fire, if only she had fire, it’d be warmth. Warmth- by now all it stood for was a concept, just the ideal of the lack of cold. Since she no longer remembered what it was, what it felt like, only that she had, some thing long ago that felt like another lifetime ago, liked it.

Fire, its concept filled her mind, sweeping into every fibre of her being, until the desire for it burned within her. Her gaze intensified as her failing mind grasped desperately onto one final desire. Fire. Heat. Warmth. Little did she know that she was channelling not only all the heat around her but also the remnants of the light, concentrating the combined energy upon those inconsequential pine needle. Fire! She gasped as the needles suddenly burst into flames.

It took a few moments of amazement before she acted, piling the needles together she then added some dry twigs. Soon a small fire was blazing, which not only wrapped her in a blanket of heat that begun to combat the impending frostbite, but it also bite into the looming shadows. Huddled before it, the clogs of her mind stirred – she had done this. She had started fire. She had killed those children. On whim she had taken life away, and returned it. What am I?

Inexplicable things had started happening around her for which she had been segregated. She, however, had always believed it was due to the bad luck she brought, ever since her birth had kill her mother. Now she wondered if the white noise on the radios, the flashing lights, the obscure temperature fluctuations were all connected with the recent events. She had always been different but now…now her mind resigned itself to believing she was something else. Monster or not she was capable of much more then those who had shunned her.

That night, that first night of realisation, of knowing she was hunted, cast out, that she had no home, no one, built up the first barrier of many. It hardened some resolve within her, some deep desire to survive instead of accepting fate and began a process that over the years would insure the world could no longer hurt her. That is not to say, however, that that first night did not leave its scars.

Capturing a Castle

Its is three years on from that fateful night, over the last three years Mia has been wondering steadily southwards and is now far beyond her home regions in Norway, in fact she is treading softly upon the spring moss within the Black forests of Germany. Life has been a hard lesson, but she has coped, becoming leaner, faster, stronger, and much more adapt in the ways of survival. Though never fat, the years of hiking and a fine diet have left her with muscle and bone and little else. Yet she has more peace than ever before. More free than ever before. You could almost venture as far to say she was happy for the first time.

She was doing like she normally did; aimlessly wondering forest trails with the vague appreciation that if the sun stayed behind to her right she was doing fine. Sometimes the occasional thought found its way into her conscious mind but for the most part her mind was at ease, empty, as she simply walked. In no way did she not have strong feelings about what had happened to her but after three years of mulling it over her mind couldn’t take much more of the familiar trails remembering would led to, nor the pain it would cause, so she sealed it off. Allowing her to survive, for a 11 year olds’ heart does not carry on beating if her mind is not with her at all times. Even before her new life, due to her segregation she had been forced to grow up quickly, and with her new life all remains of her childhood had been stripped away, far too soon.

The small well trodden trail, deer being its most frequent visitor, slowly tipped a small hill, from which if you just tilted you head upwards, your gaze could catch a glimpse of the looming castle through the canopy. Mia did just that, and her mouth hung open as she gazed upon her first medieval castle. In school she had been taught about them, been shown pictures even, but when its roots protrude from the mountain beneath it, when its crumbling battlement’s silhouette stand out against the dying sun, and when it sends the world around you into shadow, making the earth tremble at its majestic presence, that…that is something entirely different.

The path on the mountain looked step, most probably a full day’s hike, and it was impossible for her to make it by nightfall, yet she set herself a goal. Reach the castle. The positioning of the castle was due to its easily defendable positioning, and owing to this there was only one, small, barely recognisable path that wound up to its one and only entrance, and it was this that she began. To others it would be a fool’s task, which had a highly likelihood of breaking an ankle than making it, but she then she wasn’t like others. So unlike others was she, that a night hike for her was no more dangerous than one in broad daylight day. Ever since an incident last year involving a precariously thin windy path, a fall to her death, and a pack of wolves she had been able to see in the dark. It seemed her abilities presented themselves when needed, and not a moment before.

***

Her necked strained as she gazed upwards to the rusting portcullis, her breath was still coming in short, loud gasps, and her calf muscles were crying out for a rest, yet her curiosity overrode everything. She marvelled at the craftsman ship which had withstood the petty quarrels of men and the howling wind. The wind which now screeched through the once filled corridors, bringing whispers of another age along with it, a foolish laugh perhaps, long forgotten. Oddly enough the ghost of old, unnerved Mia not, in fact she felt immediately attached to the ruins. Its mine, my castle.

Her mind was far too awake considering her new surroundings for sleep to even be considered, so she continued her wonderings. A huge heath, dungeons, a magnificent hall that opened to the sky, rooms upon rooms which she could only widely guess at their intended use. Eventually, having been drawn ever higher, she found her way to the, the look out point, the roof of a spindly tower, which seemed suspended in the air rather than attached to the ground. Looking out across the land before her, her mind seemed to be carried by the wind. Tumbling through the high grasses that surrounded the lake, bustling through the black pines which composed the majority of the forest, and then soaring over the canopy itself, a blanket of stars guiding her way form above. Resultantly she returned, and felt the wind wiping her hair across her cheeks, and her palms against the harsh, moss ridden stone.

Once more her thoughts drifted, but this time they trailed back to that catalytic day. The village until that point had tolerated her, loved her no, cared for her no, but tolerated yes for she had done no harm. The children stared openly, while the adults pretended she was just an ordinary child once the first signs had occurred. Simple things like finding people in the dark with no problem, like being able to play in the snow longer than anyone else, had been all it had started off as. She was far from ordinary, however, and once her powers had started to manifest it didn’t take long before everyone in the village found excuses to avoid from her. Being friendless was one thing, being hated that’s quite another.

That day, however, she crossed the line. It had been evitable, she was never going to have been allowed to stay there, this just meant the departure was immature, unexpected to both parties. That day when her classmates had decided that the “Freak” had to be dealt with. She still winced at the memory of being held down on the table tops of some of the desks, their sweaty hands forcing her face down into their immovable grains. And then a boy, What was his name again? Theo, ahhh yes, Theo. He had stolen a knife from the kitchens, and…. And the rest she blinked away. There was no need to sink in the past now, now she had all this.