~Author's note~ Hello again everyone! I haven't updated any of my stories for a long time. I had bad writers block, and you know how that is. So I decided to write a new His Dark Materials fanfiction. If you read them, you'll know how childish and stupid my twenty originals were. Anyhow, please review after you read this chapter. If anyone likes it, I'll post another chapter. It does help me write faster.

~Disclaimer~ I own the whole world. So you can't exactly sue me, since I own you, too. Seriously, I don't own Philip Pullman's characters.

She stood out on the roof again, looking towards the water. It was far from the roof of her apartment, and hardly visible through the smog. It was a good day, and the girl could just see a glint of grey water near where the harbor would be if she could see it.

She hated the view. Even though it was sunny, it was as if horrible choking fog never went away.

"Ariu," the girl's younger sister called out, climbing up onto the roof.

Ariu turned around, and sighed. "Lucy!" she snapped. "You know you aren't allowed up on the roof!"

Lucy giggled, and waggled her four-year-old finger at her sister, sticking out her tongue. "'Nobody is allowed on the roof! You're breaking a rule!" She skipped about on the steep surface of the roof.

Not for the first time, Ariu wished the manager would do something about the locks on the roof trapdoor. Even she knew that she shouldn't be on them, five stories above the ground. But the city was so crowed! It was the only place she could get any peace. And now her sister was ruining it.

Exasperated, she grabbed Lucy's arm, and yanked it, causing her to fall down abruptly.

"Let go of me!" the little girl yelled, beginning to cry.

"Hush!" Ariu snapped. "Hush, if you don't want Luma to get out the switch."

"Luma!" Lucy yelled. "Luma!" She called for their mother. "Lumaaaaaaaa!"

"You'll get in trouble too, you know! Do you want me to tell Far that you like him?"

Far was some boy Lucy liked.

That comment shut her right up.

"Fine," the little girl sneered. "I won't tell on you if you let me go!"

Ariu took her hand off Lucy's arm. "If you tell anyone, I'll beat you up!" Of course it wasn't true, but Lucy didn't need to know that.

"Hmph!"

"Lucy!" Ariu cried out in shock. It had seemed like it had taken only a split second for the young girl to get to the edge of the roof. She dashed toward her sister, and reached out to grab her, when Lucy slipped and fell off the roof.

"Lucy!" the girl's daemon yelled, reaching a giant bear claw down to snatch her up.

When the little girl had been hauled back into the building, Ariu began to scold her.

Half an hour later, two girls and two daemons walked down the rickety stairs to the floor of the apartment building in which they resided.

The twelve-year-old girl sighed and hoped that she wouldn't have to baby-sit her sister that day. But if her mother got another "job", she would have to.

The apartment smelled a bit rank, and there were strange sorts of stains in the corners, and watermarks on the ceiling.

Ariu stomped into the small room she and her sister shared, and tossed herself down on her bed, about the only decent piece of furniture in the house. Her daemon sat on her pillow in the form of a penguin, and watched her.

Ariu didn't mind her tiny apartment so much. It was a whole lot better than anything the other people in her stupid city had. The bad thing was that she couldn't accept living like an animal, holed up in a cage.

Everyone else could.

Especially her mother.

Presently, Ariu went out into the living room, with the small window as the only source of light, smothered by smog. There was a note from her mother, saying that she was to watch her sister that day.

Everyone in their building knew what her mother did for a living. It wasn't anything good or noble, but it made money, which was pretty much the only think people cared about in Crapville. Which, in case you can't tell, was Ariu's name for the place.

She could still remember when her classmates had found out what her mother did for a living. Ariu had to close her eyes and count to ten, as the anger swept through her. She hadn't even known it was bad then.

She attened the School of the Mind, where students learned to read and control minds, and various other types of magic. It was very exclusive, and the only way you could get in was if you had a family member who had graduated. Ariu's older cousin had graduated a few years before, so Ariu had the opportunity to attend. And it wasn't at all cheap.

The girl had jumped at the chance to learn to read minds. And she couldn't wait to learn the other subtle arts. But school hadn't been very eventful at first. All they learned in the first term was the laws of magic, and many confusing sayings. However, it seemed to be worth it. Anyone attending the school lived in the dorms during term, and it was worth any amount of work she did at school not to have to live in Crapville.

And you can imagine how her mother's profession had been discovered in a school where the older students were reading minds.

Ariu shook her head and looked out the small window. She could see a narrow alley way between her building and the one next to it. In the alley, a lump lay under a blanket, moving slightly.

She yanked open the window, and, grabbing her mask, leaned out the window.

"Get up! Get up, you bum! Get yourself a home!" The bum ignored her, so she threw a newspaper at it, until it stood and trudged away.

"That was mean," her daemon told her, looking up at her, from her spot as a wolf on the floor.

"I know," Ariu said, not sure if she should feel bad or not. She believed that anyone who was poor could get help. No one really had much money those days, but there was no reason to be homeless! "But I'm sure they don't have enough feelings to care."

Although the girl and her daemon, Aruin, were linked through their minds and souls, they didn't always share the same opinion. But both of them knew that no one could convince either of them of something they didn't believe. It didn't always stop them from trying though.

The girl began to pace through the small room. Back and forth, as Lucy watched them from the dingy sofa. Finally, the daemon suggested that they go outside.

"Sure." Ariu agreed readily. She was so bored that time was stretching on forever. She looked for Lucy, who had gone to watch the television in their Luma's room.

She pushed the lock on the outside of the door. She had been locked in there before when her mother had visitors over. Then she left the apartment, making sure to lock up before she went.

Half an hour later, she walked on the pier with a group of her followers. She was very popular in her area, and that caused kids to follow her around. That was all right. She liked these ones.

One of the boys took of a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and each of the five children took one.

Ariu tried not to cough as she breathed. She never really inhaled, just let the cigarette go out eventually. No one really smoked now that so many people had died from it. And, as it happened with children, they began to speak about the topic that was most popular lately.

"Did you hear about that sickness that's been going around?" Jenny, one of the children, asked. She was about Ariu's age, but since she didn't know, and Ariu couldn't yet read minds, they didn't know. Of course, they had all heard of the sickness, but they looked at her wide eyed anyway.

Ariu smoothed back her long dark brown hair, and nodded. "Duh. Everyone has! My cousin had to treat somebody who had it."

"Oh!" one small boy added. "My pa himself saw somebody with the sickness. He saw the person die. And everything."

Ariu smiled slightly at her daemon as she thought of a plan to get the boy back for lying. She would tell him exactly what the disease did.

"I'm so sorry! Is your father okay?"

The boy looked slightly confused. "Yeah... He just saw it. Din't touch it or nothing."

"And he's still alive! Jon, did he watch it on a movie? Because no non-magical person can be close enough to see a person with the sickness and still live. The bugs crawl through your stomach and organs. It tears up your heart, and eats the part that your daemon is in. The pain is so bad that you won't die. You'll wish and wish that you could die, because you can't talk to your daemon. It becomes just like an animal. It's like you'll be dead without your daemon. You'll wander forever, but your daemon will just be an animal and its soul will be stolen away. When you die, it won't be real death. You see, the disease has a mind of it's own. It's alive, and it thrives off loneliness and hopelessness." She smiled and looked around at her followers. "But you guys don't have to worry. It only affects adults." She was quoting her teacher for current events.

Aruin sighed and looked up at his human part, and shook his wildcat head. But they were in the presence of other people, so he couldn't talk to her. Even as he looked at her disaprovingly, he moved closer to her.

The four other children were clutching their daemons closer, and looked slightly afraid.

The lying boy whispered. "Bless the Twelve."

One girl scoffed. "Oh shut your trap, Ariu. You aren't all that. And besides, your mother and sister are non-magical." She looked smug.

"Go ahead and don't believe me. Just don't feel sad at all anytime soon. It can only affect you if you're--" But the girl who had spoken out what broken the mood, and the other children were talking about something else now. Ariu threw her cigarette down and headed back through the city to her home.

She was angry. Sure, she lied a lot more often than was normal for a girl of her age and size. Still, those children should have known when she was telling the truth. And that time she was.

"Sheesh!" she said to her daemon as they walked past a busy store, and a fire truck roared past. "Aren't I allowed to tell the truth once in awhile?"

"Well, if you didn't lie so much--"

"Whatever," she mumbled, scowling.

Another fire truck flew past, and the conversation was forgotten.

"Sure are a lot of fires lately around here," the girl said, looking up at the sun, her black eyes glinting.

"It's a hot summer," Aruin replied shortly.

They lived in a medium sized city called Down Town. Most of the buildings in Down Town were old and drab and grey. And almost all of its citizens were poor. In school they called it the World, and the planet was called Earth. Sometimes it was also called the Globe. But many people didn't know what they world lived in was called. Since the planet had begun to die slowly, less and less people were educated. The queens and kings and governments were giving up. Even if the whole planet went to dust, they would have enough to live as royalty for the rest of their lives. After that? Who cared?

"Oh Goddess!" Ariu yelled, shoving back the crowd of people who crowded around her building. It had been her building that was flaming. She tried to run inside. She had to get the money jar and all of her stuff. But someone pulled her back, and told her not to go in.

"Let me go!" she screamed, biting the man that held her fiercely. Aruin was in the form of a lion, and he had run into the building. Ariu dashed in after him.

"Hey!" a firefighter yelled, as the group of people clicked their tongues, and muttered words of pity. But no one followed her.

It was strange being inside of a building that was engulfed in flames. The whole place felt like it was pulsing and breathing, and the heat was horrid.

Ariu was terrified. But she didn't want to be homeless. And the only way she could prevent that was by getting the money. She passed the elevators and ignored them. They had never worked, and wouldn't now.

Instead, she dashed up the stairs. On the second floor, she was panting, and the smoke clogging her lungs.

"What One!?" she gasped as a stream of water burst through the window and slammed into her.

"I wouldn't think that it would be a good idea to curse the gods at a time like this," her daemon scolded. His lungs were smaller than hers, as he crept across the floor as a mongoose, but he could breathe all right as long as she did.

Ariu stood, lifted him up and continued up the stairs, as they seemed to tilt. Now she could see fire at the end of a hall.

She shivered, and felt the daemon move closer to her. Then she was on her floor, and the end of the hall was filled with fire.

"No!" Aruin gasped, struggling to breathe through the thickness of the smoke. Ariu coughed and rubbed at her eyes.

They had never been told to crawl during a fire, and not to rub smoke in their eyes.

"Let's go back. Ariu, we might not be able to get back down."

"You can--" she paused, feeling lightheaded. "Go--" She knew he couldn't and wouldn't.

"Help me!" someone screamed. It was very nearby. "Help me!"

"Hullo?" Ariu shouted, running into the room the voice came from.

"Oh thank the Third, Ariu, is that you?"

"Miss Hamilton!" the girl and daemon cried, racing over to the woman. Miss Hamilton was an author who had babysat Ariu and Lucy when they were younger.

"What are you doing in here, child?" the young author asked. She didn't wait for an answer before she continued. "I need to find my manuscript."

Her duck daemon waggled it's tail slightly.

"You have to get out. The building is on fire."

Miss Hamilton removed her glasses and wiped them rapidly on her blouse. "Don't try to tell me what I must do. This manuscript was my life. If I don't have it, well, I'd rather die."

"But-- Come on. We only have a few minutes!"

"I am not going until I find that manuscript," the woman replied, shoving one of her novels into her bag.

Ariu screamed as a section of the ceiling caved in. "You're mad!" she yelled. "It only took you two weeks to write it!" She didn't know why she bothered. She had her own business to take care of. But she didn't want the weight of a death on her conscience.

"I found it!" the woman screamed, startling Ariu. "It was in my purse. Now, I'll get out. Seeing as you are still in the building, you must be here to get something. If you want to get out safely, you'll have to run. If you lean out the window, they'll hold out a net for you. And don't leave your sister alone outside for too long. Someone will take her."

Ariu's stomach sunk so rapidly she almost threw up. Her little sister was still locked in their mother's bedroom!

Author's note~ I hope you liked this chapter. I enjoyed writing it. The next chapter will be up in a few days. If you find any mistakes, just tell me, and I'll try to change it. Please review.

The Twelve are the Goddesses they believe in, and each one has a special power, which I'll explain later. Thirteen is their brother, and he's like the devil, and is used as a curse. The Twelve are used more as surprise or alarm. There are other religions, but they aren't very welcome, and mostly live away from cities, or in their own cities in the mountains or other countries.

By the way, this isn't in the past. They have cars and tv and stuff.