"Ignited" Book One of the Autumn Trilogy

Chapter Two

Pressure. It's an odd feeling to have all over your body, but also in your chest, climbing down your throat, you stomach feeling heavy. Autumn felt like she was buried. Her ears clogged, her mouth open and dry with dust, and her eyes pried shut. She couldn't move her body even an inch. She wondered if she was dead. Then she suddenly began to choke. You cant choke if youre dead, can you? Her body acted on instinct. She tried to shoot upward, her arms flailing, but the heaviness around her stopped her. She struggled more, and began to feel the pressure around her loosen. She was panicking, rolling her entire body frantically, trying to get a breath, trying to get out.

Suddenly Autumn arose out of the debris of her home, coughing up ash, gasping for clean air in her smoke stained lungs. She crawled, naked, in the dust and burnt wood, away from the hole that trapped her. She couldn't see, her eyes dry and filled with ash, blindly moving forward as her body convulsed with each cough for air. She moved until her body stopped sinking into the ash, and she met solid ground. Autumn couldn't pull herself out all the way before throwing up, feeling only dust climb out of her stomach, scratching like sandpaper all the  way up. She felt pain all over her body, her joints popping and muscles creaking as she moved with each gasp and heave. She blinked, the dust painful in her sockets, before finally seeing some glimpse of light. Autumn finally caught her breath, her stomach now empty, and lungs replenished, but the sting still sat uncomfortablely with her. Autumns eyes watered, tears filled with dirt cleansing her eyes as she made out the scene around her. She saw the ground, her vomit looking like she had ate handfuls of dirt, She looked up, and saw the forest, blanketed in a mist of early morning air. Her blurry eyes met the sky, and saw the thin clouds covered in purples and pinks.

Autumn turned, looking at her naked dirty body before seeing her home, a pile of ash and burnt wood now. She remembered Vick, the fire. Her mother. Autumn felt the urge to cry, to curl up in the ash and never leave, but she also felt something she had never felt before. It was a wave of anger, of determination that wouldnt let her tears come out. She attempted to stand, rising weakly before falling. She struggled a few times, before finally standing, hunched in pain, ankle deep in the ash. Her hair brushed her shoulders, and Autumn saw it was much shorter than it used to be, no longer down her back and only barely brushing her shoulder.

"You look lost," a voice spoke to her. Autumn attaempted to turn in the direction of the voice, but only managed to move her foot.

"Who are you?" She tried to ask, but her voice was quiet, the words barely managed to come out. It hurt to speak.

"thats not the question you should be asking."

Autumn managed to twist her head, peaking into the forest, but saw no one.

"I'm not lost..." Autumn whispered, looking back at the ash pile, "This is my home."

"It doesn't look like much of anything, now."

"It burned down." Autumn looked up at the sky.

"How did you end up like that?"

Autumn caught a glance of movement in the trees, "I burned with it."

"Now, that's interesting." The movement from the tree said. It landed itself on a branch. It was a hawk

"Where are you going to go, now that your home is gone." It turned its head at her.

"I dont have anywhere to go. My family betrayed me."

"Were they really your family, then?"

"I guess not." Autumn felt a pain in her chest. She wanted to cry, but the anger held her back.

"What's this new found rage of yours?"

"I dont know. I'm not used to this."

"Well, this isn't a situation anyone could get used to." The hawk turned its head, and fluffed its wings.