Learning From Ashes

Chapter One

Blue sparkled above me, my thick hair weightless. I was weightless. I was floating.

The crystal dream splashed into reality, and suddenly, I was dizzy, I was cramped, and I had a thirst.

Walls loomed surrounding me, threatening to cave in.

“Awake, are we?” The cruel violet eyes cut through my senses, and my eyes squinted naturally at the sharp figure in front of me with Alice in Wonderland hair. She had a thin coating of beauty, barely covering the cold that lurked beneath it.

Her hair extended, to touch me.

Alarms went off in my head, echoing off my skull. Electricity sparked between her fingertips and my shining plumage.

My wings fluttered in alarm, and I was lifted as swiftly as if in an anti-friction universe.

My mouth opened for a gut-wrenching scream, but all that came out was a deadly beam of ice-hot fire, melting the barred windows.

I swept out of the room, defying gravity, leaving the bitter woman and her screams of rage alone in the cell underground, forever scheming for revenge.

Landing on a soft branch, a few..years? Decades? Centuries? Later, I stared sadly at my reflection. I had begun to appreciate my new form with all its exciting new abilities..but then I realized the restrictions of being a..bird.

The morning grass shivered with dew, beams of sunlight leaking through the canopy above.

I blinked sleepily, then, in an instant, I took flight, always aware for It, the Creature.

At the moment, I sensed nothing in particular out of place, nothing stirring, no threats.

Suddenly, yanked out of my brief state of security, I heard an exhale of breath a few feet to my left and swept upward.

An arrow nailed the bark, and if I didn’t move so quickly, I’d've been pinned to the tree.

I could make out a silhouette of a woman through the thin, damp forest growth. The woman stood still for a few seconds, then, as if she had realized I had spotted her, she strode forward. Her cool, sharp eyes pierced mine questionably for a few seconds, and then her eyebrows knotted in confusion, then alarm, then another emotion, as if she knew me.

The woman gripped her arrow and wrenched it out of the bark, her knuckles white. Then, in a swift movement, she turned sharply, and with a knowing nod at me, she took off.

I followed above her, propelled by a mysterious, fierce curiosity.

We traveled for a long time, the landscape gradually changing, the day growing older. Finally, when the mountains turned a burnt orange colour, we reached a village.

The strange woman turned to me, and said very clearly, “I am Raven Avelina,”.

Her voice seemed to pull me out of muddy water, into fresh air, and it shook me.

“I am RCG. Remember?” Worry flicker her eyes, and she pulled out her bow. I darted backward, but hovered a bit closer when she held it out to me, carved with curls and waves. She fit an arrow expertly into her bow and gracefully pulled it back. It pierced a tree a hundred feet away, dead center.

That moment, an oldmemory awoke inside of me.

Flashback

An arrow whizzed by, impaling a crudely scrawled target a few meters away.

” I win,” Raven grinned victoriously. “Let’s play again!”

I stuck my tongue out at her, both of us only about seven years old.

“No. You always win. I’m tired,” I shrugged.

“Fine. Want to go visit the baker?” She grinned, slipping the bow carved with curls and loops on her shoulder.

“Race you!” I darted past her, laughing.

Flash forward

My eyes widened as I gazed at her, my best friend from what seemed eons ago. Her face broke, as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

“So you’re the phoenix. That’s where you’ve been all these years.”

I nodded. Then, another questioned dawned RCG.