Girl On Fire (Sequel to Ashes)

Chapter 1: Stubborn

31st November 2014

It was a particularly cold winter night.

Outside of the Fire Kingdom, every blade of grass was dusted with crisp white frost. Snow had begun flutter gracefully down from the sky like icy feathers, landing delicately upon the cigarette-littered, trash-covered pavement.

The city streets were void of human life to disrupt it at such an hour.

No - that wasn't entirely true.

There was one person...

Flame came to a halt at the top of an overpass. There was a lamppost to her right, and the metal railings around the edge of the overpass right in front of her.

Without any hesitation, she climbed over the railings.

She turned around, her back pressed against the cold metal of the railings. Her hands held onto it as her gaze shifted to the ground that lay fifty-or-so feet below where she stood, the tips of her toes just over the edge of the concrete.

The lamppost's light flickered with a quiet buzz of electricity as it did so. Usually, it wasn't something that Flame would have paid much attention to. Just background noise. But everything was so silent - so eerily still - that she paid some attention to it.

She had left the Fire Kingdom at some point that evening after leaving a note in her bedroom explaining her absence. And that was because she had come to the city with the intention of dying.

Rather than leave without any explanation, Flame had decided to write a letter, containing words that would hurt far too much to have to repeat in person; not because they were hurtful towards those she loved (not intentionally, though they would find the fact that she had resorted to suicide again painful in itself) but because they made her feel so pathetic for not being able cope any longer.

She had been having excruciating nightmares. Ones she would wake up screaming from, or find herself collapsing into a ball wherever she stood, raking her nails across her skin until she bled -- just to turn the pain physical rather than mental.

Physical pain, she had found, was far more bearable than the mental torture she had endured until now.

Her phone buzzed and vibrated in her pocket, and with a sigh, she took it out with one hand and answered the call.

"Flame!" Phoenix's worried voice sounded from the device. "Thank god you picked up! We're all scared shitless- we've been looking around for you ever since we found your note! I-I thought-- I thought I was too late! Please, come home!"

Flame held the phone to her ear with one hand while the other held firmly onto the railing behind her, and her voice would have been completely monotone if not for the slight crack in it when she held back her tears.

"I'm so sorry... But I... I don't know what else to do... Please forgive me for this... Goodbye, Phoenix."

After those final two words were spoken and a tear rolled down her cheek, crashing to the concrete below, Flame hung up the call and slipped her phone into her pocket after turning it off.