Dying Fire

Chapter One

"The primary cause of unhappiness

Is never the situation

But your thoughts about it."

~Eckhart Tolle~

The war hits every inch of the country, rapidly changing its dynamics in every aspect, sparing no one. Education becomes hard to obtain, training in further areas of study difficult to come by in almost any field. As this continues, the populace as a whole turns to other means of making a living, people caught in perpetual ruts that run them in circles day and night.

            Young girls are raised to be whores to bring home money and necessities to live. Young boys are thrown into fighting rings where bets are placed and prizes given. Mothers plead to keep their homes. Fathers grow desperate. Employment becomes rare and wages are too low to pay the expenses of living. Parents fight for their children to stay innocent but fail nonetheless. Others take that innocence before it can be protected.

            Children wandering the streets of the crowded city know these things happen every day, perhaps even experiencing them. Their faces are hard and unyielding as they pass empty buildings, knowing what goes on in them at night. But as more citizens are relocated from the more rural areas, being placed closer to the castle city and mingling with its native inhabitants, glimpses of a time almost forgotten are seen: children playing as they should at such ages; mothers scolding them for stealing rather than offering praise; wide, hopeful eyes peering from around corner and through shop windows. These are mixed with the dismal and create a bittersweet sense of daily life.

            The relocations are not a completely pleasant sight, however, for these people bring with them ailments and contradicting ideas. The contradictions cause a rise in violence and over-crowding allows diseases to spread, medicine being either expensive or hard to come by at any point in time. Resources go mainly to the armies fighting to protect the people, but it is at the cost of their suffering.

            People die every day due to the sicknesses that spread like wildfire and ensnare those weak from hunger or blatant exhaustion from over-working themselves. Many people are sick, but there is one in particular, a woman lying in her one-room home, that will inadvertently turn the tides of fate and flare the Fires of many to come.

            Her name is Ione, a steady Flame despite the odds of her body's survival. She lies on the floor, covered in a thin blanket she had originally knitted for her son Calex, fading in and out of consciousness, her breathing a rasping scratch in the silence. So late at night, her son is surely asleep, curled up in a corner she can't see from her position, safe and sound. Memories of the past, worries for the future, and thoughts on the present mingle in her muddled mind.

            She remembers the day she met her husband and all the time that has passed since. They were both young, and the war was only beginning, no one thinking much of it - it would end soon and nothing would come of it. She was shyly vibrant, sitting amongst the flowers in the outskirts of the city, thinking of nothing and everything at once as she usually did on lazy days. It was such an ordinary day for her; she didn't think anything odd would happen. But then a boy she had seen apprenticing to a blacksmith had sat down next to her, striking the most random conversation about the plants they were surrounded by. He introduced himself as Decimus and, from the first smile, she was his.

            He was sweet and charming then, still happy and full of life. They began seeing each other every day, in the same field of flowers, just talking. Word was spreading of how the enemy was serious, taking advantage of their every weakness, but Ione and Decimus didn't hear it and, if they did, couldn't see the weight of the situation. They were young and falling in love every day, and it was no surprise to anyone when they married a few months later.