So, I haven’t written anything new in a while. And by that, I mean, not in worlds that I haven’t already created.
A few nights ago, I had a scene in my head that was demanding to get out. So, I let it out.
It looks like it’s going to be a lead-in to something bigger. Aren’t they always?
As always, looking for constructive criticisms. :)
She squatted low, so she could feel the heat from the new fire. It was newly birthed, and so its life was tenuous at best. Any of the drafts in this house had the power to kill her infant blaze; such an event would send her home with her task unfulfilled. Offending the powers that she planned to call upon was not a good idea. This was, really, the reason she was here in the first place. She gently fanned the small, orange flames, and then positioned her small frame to block a sudden gust of wind. Too little, and her progeny would starve. Too much, and they would be slaughtered.
Finally, a dry-rotted piece of two-by-four crackled to life. She was bathed in a sudden excess of orange light. She looked no older than sixteen, though her birth records would disagree. A stained blanket served her as a skirt. The rags of a hole-riddled t-shirt, taken from the corpse of a homeless man like a deer skinned for its hide, were wrapped around her chest for modesty’s sake. Streaks of dirt and mud adorned her skin in decorative patterns. Her blonde hair was wild, save for four small braids, each with a token or charm on its end.
More pieces of the old house caught as her children grew. The heat pushed her back, and her shuffling drove a splinter into her tiny foot. Frowning for a moment, she maneuvered her bony knees into a sitting position, and examined the sliver. It was wide, and she used jagged fingernails, multi-color polish chipping off with time and use, to pry the splinter out. A small droplet of blood welled up where it had pierced her skin, rolled down her foot and onto the floor.
So, it was to be that kind of rite. That kind of night. She smiled, because it was all that was left to her.
The hardwood floor was beginning to catch. She tilted her head up, and could now see the shattered rafters, tatters of pink insulation hanging like icicles. Her progeny were growing strong. The fire would soon spread outward along the floor. It would reach the rivulets of gasoline that she’d left, and it would race off into bedrooms and bathrooms; it would learn to climb and to descend stairs. In its creation, life, and death, her progeny would consume this abandoned house–a perfect sacrifice for the powers that slept in the city.
She whispered the words of awakening into the growing fire. Her children took the words as they did the wood. She named four names for the victims, paused, and then named two for the perpetrators. Standing slowly, she approached a broken window. She gingerly took a shard of glass and sawed off a tuft of her thin, straight hair. Approaching the fire, standing now, the girl tossed her hair in. She inhaled the stench of her burning hair deeply, sacrificing a part of herself in the sacrifice of the house. Tossing the glass into the fire, she turned around and headed for the open front door.
She slipped into her tattered shoes and walked out into the nighttime street. Another few steps, and the girl could hear the faint wailing of sirens. The emergency response was slow, but it would come. She sat on the dirty sidewalk on the far side of the street, facing the abandoned house. She would drink in the sight of her sacrifice until the firefighters tried to kill her children, or until there was no more of the sacrifice for the flames to consume.
