There are many ways to understand, to feel the word "burn"...you can burn physically in a fire, in a passion of lust, love, beliefs, or hatred, or in the situations that you create for yourself and others.

BURN

Prologue

Chapter 1: Ma'alesh

Judith. She didn't remember much of her early childhood, and certainly not anything of fond memories of love and affection. She didn't feel bad for herself; she didn't quite feel anything of it at all. Certainly there were others who had different experiences in reaching their adulthood, but she never looked at it as if these persons were luckier or better. Just... different.

Her most poignant childhood memory was the day that her father and his clan killed her mother. Or rather, when her father turned his back on her mother's silent condemnation, her disgust at the man she had chosen as a mate, written clearly across her face for all the world to see. No words were needed when he came to terminate their union, and to terminate her. Unable to stay or face her, or say anything, he had turned and left the room, head held high but shoulders trembling, while his men began their punishment of her mother for who and what she was.

Judith's mother was not of their race, was not part of the clan, and their union had never been accepted by the elders. Certainly Judith had never been accepted. She wasn't even certain any longer who and what her father's people were, or her mother's, for that matter. She did readily recall why her father allowed what happened to happen; he wanted to regain face and his status amongst his people. Judith recalled this quite clearly.

Judith hid under the bed while her mother was beaten and raped, berated and tortured. Judith's mother never uttered a sound, let alone the screams they obviously so wanted to hear from her. It probably made them more irate, more animalistic, that they were not given this pleasure. It seemed to Judith that it went on for quite some time. She remembered the deep male voices clearly, she remembered the smell of one of the male's expensive and somehow feminine cologne, she remembered the smell of the rare oil used to clean the katana blade after one of the assassins finally ended the torture of Judith's mother by slamming the sword through the beaten woman's heart, through her body, through the mattress underneath, and finally an inch through the floorboard inches from Judith's face. With a loud grunt, he pulled the blade back out, but not before Judith saw the artisan's mark on the razor sharp blade. She lay there, underneath the bed, on the cold wooden floor while she listened to the men jest and laugh and finally leave the room. She lay there while her mother's blood slowly seeped through the mattress and started to drip and pool on the floorboards in front of her face, until a cold drop finally dripped directly onto her face, onto her cheekbone, and slid down like a tear.

Judith did not cry.

Judith was eight.

She remembered sliding out from underneath the bed, and not allowing herself to look at what lay on it. She wanted to remember her mother as she had been; strong, breathtakingly beautiful, royal and proud. Not the bloody mass of tissue left behind after her ka had left and moved on to new adventures. Just like Judith was going to do. She walked out of the door much like her father had, but with different thoughts going through her head. Her shoulders did not shake or slump in defeat.

She never looked back into the room; she never looked back as she slipped around the now silent manse to collect the bare essentials she would need into a small satchel. She took nothing of sentimental value; no stuffed creatures or favourite books or even a picture of her mother. She didn't need them. Everything of value that she needed was kept close to her heart.

She she silently padded into her mother's private office, and opened the compartment hidden in the cabinet that her mother kept her personal weaponry in. Weapons that had not been accessible to her when she had so desperately needed them the most.

Judith removed her mother's katana, and some of the other more portable weaponry. Most importantly, she removed her mother's antique firearm, a rare and carefully tended piece of old-world weapon artistry, and the alloy metal bullets specially cast to be used with it. She took some of her mother's jewels, these to trade and barter for whatever else she would need to survive in the time ahead. She also took the PADD with the directions for Judith to find her mother's old Master and teacher, her Sifu, and an old fashioned papyrus letter sealed and addressed to just this Master to give to him upon Judith's arrival. Judith had been told it was an introduction and a plea to take on her daughter as a pupil and ward. Judith's mother rarely made pleas, but to this man, she apparently would, either out of reverence to him or knowing that he was the only one who would be able to protect and instruct her only surviving child in the traditional ways, or both.

Judith's mother had already started her young daughter's training two years previously. She had prepared for what she knew might happen, and what had indeed happened. She had prepared Judith to survive and grow and become what she was destined to be... The instrument of her mother's revenge, the holder of ancient traditions and arts.

Judith had been training since she could stand upright, training in music, training in protocol befitting a person of her rank, or rather, the rank she would have been accustomed to if her mother had been of the clan. Her father had trained her in his ways, her mother in hers. Judith now took all of these things, the tangible and the intangible, and silently slipped out of the mansion through the servants quarters, unseen and unheard.

She was unsure if her father would want to terminate his relationship with her also, and did not believe it wise to stay around to see. So she turned towards her new life and left the last vestiges of her "childhood" behind. She would miss her mother, she wished that she had been able to learn more from of her ancestry and natural gifts from her. She did feel love and loss for her mother. She also felt a new emotion, slowly simmering, burning...

Hate.

She activated the PADD and started on her way, to her new destiny. "It is what it is", she thought.

Ma'alesh.