CLOUD ENVY - S. Nara

It began with a flame

When your a kid... everything seems more simple, even when your faced with brutality and hardship. Because when your born in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire. My house was burning- I just didn't realize until it was gone.

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Her life began and ended on a cool autumn day in November, it was like any other. Amaya Ishikawa only knew one thing, how to survive. it was what she did- at the ripe age of nine she had figured out that if she played her crummy guitar well enough and mustered up a tune suitably entertaining, she might make enough to buy dinner. But of course the plan wasn't fail proof, that's where Maito and Tsume came in. Another thing she had gotten down to a science what stealing from the local market, that was the surviving part. Honest work always seemed more appealing, but then again so did going to sleep with a full belly. Even if going to sleep meant curling up in an ally way huddled with her two closest friends in the world. They were a dynamic triad, familiar but rather irrelevant to the small impoverished town in the land of Iron. Just the three street kids who occasionally get chased out of the market by the store keeper waiving a broomstick. Nothing to see, and especially nothing to dwell on. But with poverty came corruption, and that sleepy village didn't stay quiet for long.

The aforementioned kids had been just been chased from the open market, they got caught pulling the old trip and fall grift. One falls into the stall knocking over as much as they can, another feverishly helps the owner pick up, while the last grabs as much merchandise as they can. On a good day they could get enough to last them a week, not today though. Today was different, today a consistent and strong downfall of cold fall rain had overtaken the village, causing the three children to hold themselves tight in their tattered clothing as the stood on the corner of the town square. Nothing new, they stood and joked and laughed because, even though they didn't know how they'd acquire their next meal- that was just the way things went. What wasn't standard about that day was the new faces in town. It began with one.

A gruff man dawning a sword on his hip sauntered into the town as if he owned it, what no one knew was that within the day he would. However this didn't go unnoticed by the three, no one saw them, yet they saw everything. It was about two hours later when the rest of the men came, they arrived in hordes, swords drawn- and blood lust leaking from their pores. They struck down anyone that got in there way, pillaging, stealing and murder- among other unsavory things. The kids knew how to survive, so they hid. But as the thugs scoured every square inch of that village it was not so soon that they were found. Dragged to the town square where their fates would be decided.

Tsume was the first to go- dragged away with ease, stolen without remorse. The child screamed and thrashed against her captures as Amaya watched in horror. Maito was next, the boy was brave, so without regard for is own like he fought for his friend- yet it was his loyalty that would be his end.

As she watched her brother, not by blood, but by life experience be struck down like a sick dog in the street- and her sister of the same inheritance being dragged away, Amaya's life ended. the only one she ever knew, snuffed out. The market she knew so well burned to the ground, the alley she slept in more nights then she could remember used to throw the bodies of the village folk killed in the catastrophe. Faces of whom she vaguely recognized. Everything she had come to know in her nine years, her life, her world, burned to the ground in an instant. Over like a candle being blown out.

Yet in that moment a new one began, as the same man who took the only family she ever knew from her stared down at her with a hunger in his eyes her innocent mind was not yet mature enough to comprehend- she was exposed to a new reality. One where little girls were used up and thrown away like trash, where the world was no longer as simple as she remembered it being. She was too, dragged off into the night, yet when she was spit back out and the morning sun rose upon her- she was no longer the same child she was the day before. Ravaged and scarred, is how she began her new life. One not so simple. Nor so black and white.

Amaya Ishikawa was reborn that day. Shaped into something entirely new. Her world had always been on fire, just now she could feel it burning...

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yo yo yo- just got a new laptop and now I feel like rewriting this fan fiction. hope yall enjoy the republished chapter, because its a lot less cringe then the shit I wrote in the seventh grade.