Dying Fire

Chapter Eight

“We can’t help everyone,

But everyone can help someone”

~Ronald Reagan~

The next day, Araine’s life continues as though the day before never happened.

            Madline wakes her at the same time she does every day. They sit down to the same meal as every day, exchanging the same words as any other day. Araine doesn’t attempt to be spared working in the shop, accompanying her guardian across the circle to help open for business for the day. It’s the same routine, the same monotony, the same confusion in its familiarity that she’s always tried to escape from.

            Everything is the same, except for Araine herself. She doesn’t fight the sameness and goes about the usual tasks of the day, preparing medicine and luxuries in the back of the shop, away from stranger’s eyes. She doesn’t try to leave, to not have to work today, because she knows a secret.

            Everything is about to change. Something is about to happen. No one told her this. No events or rumors have hinted at this. No one else seems to know this. Only her. The girl can feel it, deep inside, stirring her Fire into a frenzy, even as nothing obvious changes around her. Inside, she has changed, is different, and to this young girl it only indicates a greater change about to occur. To what or who; where or when; how or why; she doesn’t know. But she knows something is about to happen, something is going to shift in the scheme of things.

            She doesn’t let on to having these feelings as she goes about her normal day, the sun soon reaching its peak in the sky, showing noon fast approaching once again. Soon, people will be conjugating towards the back of the shop. People in need of one or another – food, shelter, medicine, information, anything – and will ask for her help.

            This started several months ago, near to a year, with no one listening to her at first. They thought she was a trapper, luring unfortunate people to an unknown area with promises of aid, only to have them ensnared by a ringmaster or whoremonger. Slowly, however, word spread that she wasn’t at all of that sort, and one by one people started to accept her help. First, it was only a few throughout the weeks. Then, it became what it is now: groups of people coming nearly every day, some new and others old hands at it.

            Araine is released from her duties in the shop for a lunch break, a small freedom she had worked hard for months to obtain. With a few coins in her pocket, she’s allowed to wander to nearby shops in search of something interesting to eat, but she’s never done this, not in these many months. Instead, every day, she skips this meal in exchange for helping people, putting the coins away as a kind of fund. It could appear selfish that she isn’t giving this money away, helping people with it, but she hopes that one day, when she has enough saved, she can help more people than she is now.

            As she steps onto the top step, closing the door to the back entrance of the shop behind her, those that waited for her come out of hiding. Most of them are children, really, the eldest being barely fifteen and the youngest no more than three years of age. Most are grouped together, bands coming together for a better chance of surviving on their own and not falling into the hands of those that help to corrupt the streets and the people that walk them. A few are alone, however, and Araine resolves to point them in the direction of people that will take them in, show them what to do in order to get by and teach them that there is safety rather than fear in numbers.

            Looking over those approaching her, Araine pushes thoughts of Calex aside. Yesterday, with him there to distract her, she hadn’t been able to take the newcomers to the side and speak with them on a more personal level. There are fewer people today, though most she hasn’t seen in quite a while and others their second or third time coming to her. As she does every day, she moves from one person to the other, mentally compiling them together based on what they need, and as she speaks with them individually or as groups, she urges them to come together as one, using the Eternal Flame as a guide.