by Ashley West
"Don't you dare get smart with me," her mother snapped, bitterness in her tone. "I am your mother, and you will show me the respect I deserve."
"Sorry," Naomi muttered.
"Excuse me?"
"I'm sorry," she said again.
Her mother sniffed. "Why aren't you in school?"
Naomi looked at her father, but his eyes were trained on the TV again, and it was clear he wasn't going to intervene. "School's been out for three hours. It was a half day."
"What?"
"A half day? It's exam week, so we...got out early."
"I can't believe this."
That was hardly surprising.
"I can't believe you would sit there and lie to my face. A half day. What is that? That's nothing, Naomi. That's a lie. You skipped school, didn't you? You skipped, and now you're sitting here watching television like you own the place. You don't pay for anything in this house, Naomi! I don't know what I did to end up with a daughter like you."
It wasn't the first time her mother had said something like that to her, and it probably wouldn't be the last. But Naomi really didn't know where this was coming from. Her mom was mean to her, downright cruel sometimes, but usually it was within the realm of reality. Usually she was being shouted at for forgetting to wash dishes or leaving the juice on the counter. Things she'd actually done. And yeah, sometimes it turned into an attack on her intelligence or her looks, but it was usually not just outright crazy.
"I didn't skip," Naomi insisted. "Dad picked me up!" She looked over at her father, pleading with her eyes for him to say something. Anything. A simple 'yeah, I went to get her' would have been fine.
Instead he just shrugged a shoulder. "Don't bring me into this."
And all at once, Naomi was furious. She was livid. And more than that, she was tired. Every day she put up with this. With her mother coming at her with some accusation or insult, and her father just sitting there letting it happen.
"Dad," she said. "Can you just...tell her? I was at school. You came to pick me up. We stopped at the gas station afterwards and I bought a Pay Day. Just tell her." She was practically on the verge of tears, staring at her father, waiting, hoping.
"Naomi," he said, sighing. "Don't do this. I'm not getting involved."
"You never do!" She was on her feet before she knew it, standing there with her hands balled into fists. "You never get involved. You never help me. I'm your daughter, and you never do anything to help me when this happens. You just sit there and let her call me a liar and a thief and whatever else, when you know it's not true. Just because you don't want her to be mad at you."
His eyes were wide when he finally looked at her, and she spared a moment to wonder if it was because he was surprised that she'd finally said something or because he didn't want to think about what she'd said. "Naomi," he said again. "Don't do this. I'm not going to take sides between my daughter and my wife."
"It's not taking sides!" Naomi practically shouted. "It's opening your mouth and telling the truth. 'Yes, Lynn, I picked Naomi up from school'. How hard is that? Just tell the truth for once!"
"How dare you?"
Astonishingly enough, Naomi had somehow managed to forget that her mother was in the room. She'd been so focused on trying to get her dad to act right. And now her mother's face was even more twisted, even angrier.
"You don't talk to him like that. He's your father. If he's not saying he picked you up, then it's obviously because you're lying. Like the snake you are."
"No, it's because he's a coward," Naomi snapped. Now that she'd started, she found she didn't know how to stop. "He's afraid of you. And I don't blame him."
"You little--"
"You come in here every day, pissed off for whatever reason, and you take it out on us, even when we haven't done anything to you! When we don't deserve it. You call me all kinds of crap, call me stupid and ugly and worthless, and for no reason!"
"Oh, there's a reason, alright," her mother said. "Because you're an ungrateful little brat. You don't appreciate anything we've done for you. We put food in your fat mouth and clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and how do you repay us? You don't deserve anything. There are people on the street who would love to have a chance to live like this. You think you've got it so bad? You wouldn't last one night out there without us."
And that was always her trump card. The fact that Naomi was dependent on them. She could get away with whatever she wanted because it wasn't like Naomi had anywhere else to go. She was sixteen, with no job and no close family members to turn to.
But she was also tired. She was exhausted. She was counting down the months until she went away to college, but it just wasn't coming quickly enough. Ever since she was ten or so, it had been like this, and now, six years later, she was done. The thought of living like this for another two years was horrifying, and for the first time Naomi thought that she'd probably prefer to just live on the streets to this.
As she stood there, chest heaving, brain whirling, the ideal solidified in her mind. It wasn't a long term solution, wasn't even a solution at all, to be honest, but it was better than having to live in fear all the time.
And so she turned on her heel and made her way to her bedroom.
She could hear her father's noise of surprise over her shoulder, and her mother screamed at her to come back in there, but she ignored them both and slammed her door, racing for her backpack and dumping out her school books.
The door slammed open a moment later, and her mother was standing there, breathing hard, but Naomi ignored her, throwing clothes into the backpack as fast as she could.
"Oh what," her mother said. "Are you running away now? That's a laugh. Where are you going to go? No one wants you, some stupid little runaway who'll eat all their food and leave her stuff all over their home. No one will have you."
"Then I'll live on the streets," Naomi ground out between clenched teeth. "Anywhere is better than here with you."
"That's what you think? Then get out. Get out of my house. I don't have to stand here and listen to you talk to me like this. After all I do for you. I go to work for nine hours a day, five and six days a week to make sure there's food on the table, and you act like you have it so bad."
"Yeah, that definitely makes up for the abuse," Naomi muttered.
"What abuse? I don't hit you."
"There's more than one kind of abuse! And I'm sick of it. I haven't done anything to deserve this! You treat me like crap all the time, and I'm done, Mom. I'd rather be homeless than have to sit here and deal with this for another two years!”
“If you leave, you can’t come back,” her mother said. “If you walk out of this house, I don’t ever want to see your ugly little face again.”
“Good,” Naomi said, venom in her tone. “I don’t ever want to come back.”
It might not have been her best idea, all things considered.
It was late afternoon, and she was just walking down the road without a clue where she was going. Then again, she hadn’t really thought this through beyond just getting out. Once her heart had stopped racing and the red had cleared from her eyes, it was pretty obvious that this hadn’t been a great plan.
What did she know about being homeless? The most she’d ever seen was the people downtown who slept under the bridge and came out to walk around near the convention center and ask for money.
She didn’t think she could do that. Sleeping under a bridge sounded terrible and asking for money was… Naomi shuddered.
But she’d done it now. She’d walked out of her house, and there really wasn’t anyway she could go back. She didn’t want to go back. She just...didn’t want to have to sleep in the gutter.
She didn’t sleep in the gutter.
Sometimes she slept in the park, when the weather was nice. She ran errands for an older woman who had taken pity on her and then used the money she’d been paid to stay in a motel for a few nights. She hung out in twenty four hour grocery stores until her
eyes itched and her body cried out for sleep. She learned how to keep moving. Sometimes she slept under bridges, curled up in a thick blanket. There were shelters she could spend time in, and she often took advantage of that, filing in with other unfortunate young people like herself and getting hot meals, a shower, and a place to sleep for the night.
It wasn’t an easy life by any means, but it was all she had.
Sometimes she thought about her parents. Usually when it was cold outside, and she was shivering in a thin coat as she made her way down some residential street. People weren’t so good with thinking about their own privacy usually, blinds and curtains thrown open, letting her see into living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens as she walked by. She saw families sitting around their tables, around televisions and board games, and she wondered if her own family thought about her ever. If they missed her or wondered where she was. If she was even still alive. Did they care?
Had her mother told the rest of the family that she’d run away? What would her aunt and uncle think? They were really the only family she cared about now, and she just knew her mother would twist it to make it sound like she was just some ungrateful brat who had run out on her family.
As it turned out, that was not what happened.
It was easy to lose track of time when you were moving from place to place, but Naomi was pretty sure she’d been on her own for almost two years. Some days she was surprised that she’d made it this far.
She knew where to linger and where not to, though, and she had learned how to survive, so when two police officers came heading straight for her when she was sitting in the park one day, she wondered where she had messed up.
“Are you Naomi Watson?” one of them asked, and he smiled at her, though his eyes were stern.
“No,” she said quickly, getting to her feet. “I’m not.”
The officers looked at each other. They were both male, tall and broad, though one of them had dark skin the color of strong coffee while the other was blond and pale. “Well,” said the dark skinned one. “If you know Naomi, could you tell her that her aunt is looking for her?”
That made her pause. “My—her aunt? What for?”
“Her uncle died.”
It hit like a blow to the chest. Her Uncle Keith was her favorite family member. Sometimes she thought he knew what her mother was like, really, because he’d invite her over to stay for the weekend sometimes, and he always looked concerned when he asked how she was doing. Naomi hadn’t seen him for two years, and now he was apparently gone.
“That’s...horrible,” she murmured. “What happened?”
“Cancer,” was the reply.
Naomi flinched. She hadn’t even known.
“What are you looking for me for?” she wanted to know, giving up the pretense.
“He left you something, it seems,” said the pale officer. “And your aunt wants you to come claim it.”
Keith and Carol, her aunt and uncle were filthy rich through various means, but she was surprised that he had left her anything. She was even more surprised when she found out what it was.
“A house?” she screeched, sitting across from her aunt in a lawyer’s office. “He left me a house?”
“Yes,” her Aunt Carol said. “It’s an old house and no one has lived in it for years, so it’ll need a fair amount of work. But he wanted you to have it. He wanted you to have a safe place.”
Naomi looked down at her hands and blinked hard, trying not to cry. “That sounds like him,” she said softly.
“As you are eighteen now,” said the lawyer who was dealing with the estate. “It’s yours.”
And that was the beginning of the rest of her life.
Chapter One: Spark
The heat of the day was pleasant rather than oppressive, but Samel could still feel the sweat beading between his shoulder blades as he stood on the sand. He adjusted his stance, feeling the grit and granules of sand under his bare feet, the heat of them soaking into his soles. This was familiar. The training flats were where he’d spent so much of his time as a young person with aspirations of being a warrior. He’d been put flat on his back here time and time again until he’d worked out how to shift things to his advantage and then ended up laying people out instead of the other way around.
Samel was shirtless, just a pair of tight pants on, in fact. Loose fabric could catch fire too easily so these were the style pants he usually preferred to be practical here.
For the moment, he was the only one standing there. A small crowd of hopeful young recruits were gathered around, ready to watch his demonstration and try their hand at sparring with him. It was sure to be enlightening for them.
He stretched, arms and hands reaching up towards the sky, back cracking, and then he looked at the young faces in front of him. “Hello,” he greeted them, voice pitched just loud enough for them all to be able to hear. “If you are here, then it’s likely you understand that joining the fire warriors is one of the most important things you could ever do.” He smiled, feet tapping at the ground beneath them. “In our planet lies a power, and it is up to us to channel it, to give it form. The fire warriors take that burden every day. We take it and we shape it and then use it to make our people safe. It’s not something to take lightly.”
His hands were steady as he stretched his arms out so that those in the front could see them. The shiny skin that wrapped around his forearms from his First Burns was clearly on display, and he turned his arms this way and that so the skin caught the light. “Once you decide on this path, it will mark you. You’ll never be able to escape it. The fires will burn in you, and if you don’t use them as they are meant to be used, they will consume you.”
These were some of the same words that his mentors had said to him, back when he’d been standing on the precipice of this decision. Samel could only hope that the recruits were listening now as he had listened then.
“There is no shame in not taking this path. If you feel it’s not right for you, then it’s better to step aside and find another path than put yourself on this one. This path claims everyone on it, in one way or another.”
“What made you want to be a warrior?” someone asked.
Samel smiled. “Honestly? I don’t know. It’s what I’ve wanted since I was very little. Since I saw my first demonstration. Neither of my parents were warriors, as far as I know I’m the only one in my family to ever do this. I felt the calling inside of me, and I knew what to do with it. That’s all I can say.”
“Have you ever regretted it?” someone else wanted to know.
“No.” That was an honest, easy answer. “I never have. This was always going to be where I ended up, and I love it.”
He took several more questions from the recruits, answering things about how being a warrior changed your personal life, whether his family approved of his path, how close he’d come to dying before. Samel let the truth flow out of him. He had no reason to lie to them, they’d find out one way or another, and it was better that they knew what they were getting themselves into before it was too late. Once they seemed to be satisfied, he adjusted his posture into a fighting stance. None of them knew how to wield flames yet, so their sparring would be simply hand to hand.
No matter what kind of powers or weapons a warrior used, if they didn’t know how to hold their own in hand to hand combat, they wouldn’t last long in any battle. Powers could fail or be countered, weapons could be broken or lost, but the strength inside a warrior was something they could always count on.
He lifted one hand, smiling as they all stared at him. "Well," he said, sounding amused. "What are you waiting for? The first part of this is the spar." He curled his fingers inwards, beckoning them towards him.
For a moment they all just looked at each other as if they weren't sure what to do, and then one of them broke away from the rest and stepped up. He was younger than Samel by a good bit, but he was tall and muscular, sturdy in a way that would help him.
"No flames?" asked the
young man.
"No flames," Samel agreed. "Just our bodies. Hand to hand. You have to be quick and prepared before you ever add flames to your fighting. Come at me."
The boy took a moment to consider, and Samel allowed it. When he rushed in, it was in a move that Samel didn't recognize, but he was able to counter it easily. He stopped the boy's fist with the flat of his hand and then grabbed his wrist and twisted, using his momentum against him and sending him crashing to the sand.
Everyone winced. It took a fair amount of self control not to laugh at them. Samel remembered being this young and eager. He remembered wanting nothing more than to prove himself, and he remembered spending plenty of time on his back in the sand. If these recruits made it that far, then they'd spend their fair share of time doing the same. Being put in their places again and again until they were ready to move on.
By the end of it, he was pleasantly sore and the new recruits were bruised but filled with admiration. Samel waved and sent them off to clean themselves up.
When he turned to find his shoes so he could head off to find something to eat, he saw General Holin standing there watching.
"General," Samel said, inclining his head and wrapping his left hand around his right wrist in a salute.
"Captain," Holin said, a smile cracking his face. The man was older than Samel by quite a bit, face lined and weathered. But he was still one of the finest warriors on the entire planet, and a brilliant strategist as well. "I wonder if you'd walk with me."
"Of course, General," Samel said, sliding his feet into his shoes. "Was there a place in particular you were walking to? I only ask because I'm starving."
Holin laughed. "Then to the market square we go. You deserve a good meal after letting the new ones crawl all over you."
"They aren't that bad," Samel said, falling into step with his superior. "They're raw, yes, but they have potential. And we were all that raw once."
"That we were," Holin agreed. "Though it's hard to remember at times. You're good with them, and they clearly look up to you. I'm glad we started letting you younger ones deal with them. They see you as an attainable goal, rather than some relic they would rather not be."
