https://mmcarson78.wixsite.com/mace.....-spark-s-light
Chapter 1:
Candlelight
My awakening was in a dimly lit, damp basement, thick with the iron-tinged smell of blood. I recognized it as soon as it hit me, before even my vision could clear. But soon my vision grasped onto the sight of the person beside me. Bloody and gone was the person who lay slumped against me, their temple pressed to mine, and as soon as I saw them, I pushed the corpse away. I was startled by the bloody scene, but also by the sensation of my first emotion. It made my chest tighten, my heart quicken, and my body tremble. I didn’t know at the time what this emotion was, but much later I recognized it as fear. Then, more fear as I looked around to try to get an understanding of the situation.
It was a dreary basement with a dirt floor, stone walls, and crates that lay haphazardly pushed against the walls. I sat in the center of a large circle surrounded by symbols carved into the dirt, the corpse now pushed to the side of me, and a robed young man lay on hands and knees sobbing powerfully. Richard. The name came to me, but I didn't know from where or why. I had no memory of ever having met him. This thought occurred to me as well as the thought that I didn't seem to have any memories at all. How could I have knowledge without memory? My mind swirled around this thought, gaining no real understanding from it no matter how I tried.
"Richard", I whispered to myself, holding onto the one piece of information I seemed to have.
This seemed to stir the crying teenager, and looking up, his tearful face filled with joy. Though I didn't know it yet, this was the only time I would ever see him smile. "Maria! It worked! Oh thank the gods, it worked!" he rejoiced as he pulled me into a tight hug.
The feeling of warmth was welcomed, but there was still so much I didn't know. I awkwardly pushed him away from me, hoping to get some answers. His face was warped in confusion, however, and I couldn't help but feel an emptiness growing inside of me.
"What's the matter? You don't still feel ill, do you?" His expression snapped to one of worry.
I shook my head.
"Oh good. Well what is it then?" he asked anxiously.
"Who are you? Am I? Who am I?" I began, but abruptly interrupted myself "-Oh! My voice sounds so strange." I looked down at myself the way one looks at their hands when they are lost with themselves. I found even more emotions of which I couldn’t comprehend here, though. My skin was pure white, not a white that is normally flushed with the pinks and reds that live in skin, but a white that one expected to find on their sheets.
Whiter than the corpse that I had pushed away, my skin was yet another thing to pull out strange emotions from me. But I couldn't dwell on this for more than a brief few seconds before Richard shook me.
"What? No, that can't be! You must be joking with me, dear sister. You must be!" I looked back up to see him wearing a mask of distress, horribly terrified and confused.
I simply shook my head again, not knowing how to respond to so many words that offered me more questions than they did answers.
His face shrank and soured, with more sadness and regret playing upon it. "This can't be! I studied and adjusted everything to perfection. This isn't possible!" He broke down again and clutched at his sides as though trying to hold himself together.
I awkwardly shifted there, waiting for him to piece himself back together so I could hopefully get some answers, but after several long moments it became clear that he was incapable of doing so. I reached out a gentle hand and placed it on Richard's shoulder. Instantly he flinched away from me and snapped a hateful look in my direction. For a small second he seemed to regret this, but then he doubled down. Standing to his full height and swiping away his tears, he folded his arms as he glared at me. "I don't know where I went wrong, but you are not my Maria, that much is clear."
"R-Richard." I whispered again, still grasping at threads of sense.
He faltered for a moment, once more tears filling his eyes, but just as soon as they had arrived, he pushed them away, and instead lashed out at my face. "You will address me as Firnyn." He said while adjusting the glove on the hand he had just slapped me with. My first taste of pain left a sickly curdling in my stomach and tears in my eyes. This was the first of much pain to be had under Firnyn's care.
Firnyn was a strict person who demanded perfection. He treated me as an unruly dog until I managed to meet his expectations. Truthfully, it was not hard to see what he wanted from me. He wanted to forget I existed. It didn’t take long for me to piece together the moments of my first memory where Firnyn spoke, and to realize that I used to be his sister. Some way or another, he had taken me from the corpse that used to be my body and put me in this one. But something had gone wrong, and I had no memory of ever having been related to him. This simply tore him apart, and I had a strange connection to what he was experiencing. So, in the beginning with just the two of us, I rapidly adapted to being seen, not heard, and never showing an ounce of the emotions that I could never place for myself. Even emotions that made me smile or laugh called for a beating under Firnyn's hand, and so I learned what I assumed to be the ways of the world. I resigned to the fact that whatever I was, I was better off forgotten.
Before I learned my lesson, no matter how I asked or pleaded or begged, Firnyn would never tell me what I was, nor who I had been. I was different from him and others like him. I was fully aged, and as seasons passed, he felt the sting of their passing, turning from a young teenager to a full-fledged man. While my skin, on the other hand, never tarnished with wrinkle nor line. I also found that I ate differently. He would eat organic matter, fruit, meat, vegetables while I was only nourished through the consumption of wax. Wax was really the strangest aspect, but the most relevant to my predicament, it seemed, as I held a stark resemblance to that of a candle. My skin was supple and smooth, but would melt if I got too close to the fireplace. And my hair at the very top of my head spiked upwards into a point where there sat a wick. A wick that was never to be lit nor cut according to Firnyn, because he deemed it "wasteful." I was this creature I had no knowledge of, and I was being cared for by a man that refused to tell me what I so longed for. But after several beatings I learned to keep ahold of my search for answers and once again show no emotion.
After several years that blurred together into a shape of only nonsense and pain under Firnyn's wrath, Firnyn decided to make more of my kind. I was forbidden to see the process of making the “creatures,” but he was open in the fact that he would be granting me “siblings.”
The first day of my siblings’ existence started violently, as Firnyn and two hooded men dragged a Satyr couple down into the basement as they kicked and screamed. I covered my ears for an hour as the screams echoed up to the living room. But then, they stopped, and shortly afterward, my siblings of metal and bone rose from the basement at Firnyn's command. They did not look like me at all, but they did seem to have the same innate need for answers that I did. I felt my heart skip with anticipation to have new people to talk to, even if only in secret.
Firnyn seemed to enjoy their presence, though he barely showed it. He even gifted my siblings a courtesy that he deemed unnecessary for me, a name. The metal being was named Reeve. His large frame made him a formidable sight, but he was gentle and quiet. It didn’t take him any time to get used to Firnyn’s unspoken rules of showing no emotion, and I found myself envious of how easily he navigated Firnyn’s temper. My other sibling was the exact opposite of Reeve, though. Named Ultha, she was made of bone, was even slimmer than my small frame, and had a temper that rivaled even Firnyn’s. She had very little patience for Firnyn’s orders, and even less patience for his punishments. Despite her temper, though, she was exceedingly sweet to me.
I tried my best to spend time with both of them, catching simple sweet moments of hushed conversations and laughter as we did our daily tasks. Over the next few months, I began to grow a feeling of affection and trust toward both of them, genuinely viewing them as my siblings. But soon, despite me not even knowing the emotions I felt, Firnyn somehow noticed, and decided that his usual punishments were not enough for this slight against him. So, just three months after making my siblings, Firnyn did away with me. He assigned my siblings all the tasks I had normally been assigned, and he hid me away. He forced me into a closet where he stored his large supply of candles. I had seen the dreary closet a few times as I retrieved the candles from within to eat once a week. But now it looked a bit different. There was a small cot, a single book, and some matches.
The day I was first forced into the closet, he had dragged me from my usual place in the corner of the kitchen by the window, up the few flights of stairs to his study, and locked the door shut. I was full of emotions that made my heart ache in the beginning of those days in the dark. It hurt to think that the only light I'd ever see again was that from beneath the door or from the matches. It hurt to think of never again seeing the gentle rolling hills outside the tower. It hurt to think of never again seeing my little sitting spots for being seen and not heard. And it hurt to think of never again seeing Ultha and Reeve. But as the years in the closet passed, that emotion eventually faded into a complacent acceptance. I was locked in here, and nothing I could do would ever change that. I stayed in the closet locked away for several years. This period of time blurred together, though, so I was unsure of how much time passed and my memories of that time are a mix of silence, darkness, and treasured moments where I heard my siblings’ voices.
But then, there was the day the closet opened.