She stood staring out over the desert plains. She felt the water flowing under her feet, through her body. She wasn't thirsty, wasn't hungry, she just was. Everything changed so much in the last four years. She stood there watching a desert hawk soar, yelling out as it searched for something to eat, something to do. She wanted that freedom, didn't realize that she had that freedom; it ran through her veins, through her heart, her very soul. She didn't feel free though, she felt bound to the powers she was gifted with, that she was cursed with. Looking at her hands as the gripped her walking stick she thought of those powers. Fire couldn't burn her as it coursed through her veins, water called to her intertwining with its opposite element. The fight between the two elements raged in her body.
She remembered the first day she found out something was – different about her. She remembered being inside standing in the midst of flames, flames that swirled around her. Early she was playing with her brothers G.I. Joe's, a Barbie tied around the waist, hung off the closet door. She had heard the pop, thinking nothing of it she continued to play. Her father was in town grabbing some feed for the cattle and chickens, her mother was down in their small garden picking whichever ripe vegetables there were. No one new that the house would go up in smoke ten minutes later after she heard that strange little pop. That was when everything changed.
She had been trapped, beams fell and splintered, sending sparks and cinders onto her body, but they never burned her. She remembered hearing her parents yell out for her, already safe in the humid air outside their country house. They called out to their youngest daughter, her mother almost fainting at the thought that she might lose her daughter, her only daughter. She watched them from the window; she had been too scared to move. She had only been eight. Her mother was on the ground heaving sobs racked had racked her body as she looked to the sky to , her mother on the ground heaving sobs looking up to the sky and praying. Her father looking around the house for a point of entry, covering his face from the force of heat that erupted from the burning hulk, he had wanted to save her. Her older brother had already moved out and gone to college, unaware of the trauma that was happening, he was safe in his dorm room studying for a midterm exam. Her sister was spending the night at a friend's house across the corn field. And she was there staring out the window wondering if the flames would eat through her skin. Then she heard the flames, or more correctly the voices within the flames, they were calling out to her, something was at least. Telling her, that it wasn't her time to go, that she had the courage to go on, that she had to go on, there was no other choice; it was already decided. She then grew sad, thinking that at eight years old she was already going crazy. She started to cry. Though tears came, they had no use in the red glow of the house. For a miracle to happen is what she prayed. What her mother had prayed for. As she cried harder, she found the strength to move to find herself an exit. And as thunder clapped outside, lightning blazed through the once star lit, now smoke filled night. And for the answer to their prayers rain fell hard that night covering all the acres of their farm it fell. It had brought life, and strength.
She walked from that house that night with a few second degree burns and a new life. Over the years she found her true calling. Through the two elements that saved her life she had two gifts she chose to wield, she wanted to master them. Instead of abandoning her, her parents accepted the gifts as the means of a certain kind of savior. After that night she begged her parents to enroll her in martial arts, all forms, all means. Because of what she feared and heard fire could not touch her. Because of what she prayed water was a part of her.
Over the years, things started to change. Through her sadness it rained, through her anger fire brought life. Small accidents led to accusations. Like the one in the chemistry lab at school, where she got angry, because Clark Eaton had decided to grab her ass and whisper how she should meet him in the shower after the big game and use her pretty little mouth. Fire spurted from a striker that hadn't move from the table since the beginning of the class. While the guys at her table chuckled, the once leveled flames of the Bunsen burner blew up, singing the ceiling. And the lewd comment making jock backed away, the two other guys in her group just stared at her, time just seemed to stop. After that she acquired the name Rayne Fire that day. No one could touch her if she didn't want them to, some would say that she had a force field around her that none could get through.