Disclaimer: Valdemar and concepts belong to Mercedes Lackey; the lyrics are to "Not Alone" by Red; this story and Original Characters belong to their author.
Notes: Introducing Kylla Tucker and her Companion, Piper. They were originally created for an RP that never got off the ground. Oh well, they're still characters I'm fond of, so I'm using them here instead! :)
FIRE AND ASHES
By Senashenta
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Slowly fading away
You're lost and so afraid
Where is the hope in a world so cold
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It was the middle of the night when Kylla woke, pulled from a deep sleep by something that she, in her dream-muzzy state, couldn't quite identify. It was strange, though, because she couldn't remember the last time she hadn't slept through the night—normally she slept deeply and had to be forced out of bed in the morning by her mother, wielding tickling fingers and fond exasperation.
Something was wrong, but she just couldn't quite put her finger on what.
Rolling over a little, Kylla reached out to wake her sister. She and Karrie shared a room and a bed in their family's small rural farmhouse and had ever since they were little girls. Shaking Karrie's shoulder, she pushed up on the opposite elbow, sitting up slightly.
"Karrie, c'mon, wake up."
"Mmh." Karrie replied, and swatted her away, then pulled the blankets up over her head, burrowing down into the pillow even more. Kylla frowned, grasped the blankets herself and yanked them back down, flinging them off of her sister and out of the way, even as Karrie shivered and groped after them. Kylla simply poked her a few times until Karrie finally looked up, squinting, and lifted one hand to rub at her eyes.
"Jeez, Kylla… what d' you want…?"
There was an urgency to Kylla's response, though she wasn't even entirely sure why. "Something's wrong."
"What is…?"
"I don't…" Frowning, she pushed up some more until she was seated properly and swung her legs around over the edge of the bed. "I don't know, just something, okay?"
"You're crazy." Karrie muttered, pulling her pillow over her head. "Same as always."
"I am not!" Kylla shot a glare over her shoulder at her little sister, then stood—
—and that was when she smelled the smoke.
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Looking for a distant light
Someone who could save a life
You're living in fear that no one will hear your cries
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Their father smoked a pipe. He always had, or at least as long as either Kylla or Karrie could remember. It was one of Kylla's fonder memories of her early childhood—sitting on the porch with him while he smoked and whittled, often making toys and figures for his two young daughters to play with.
But the smoke from his pipe smelled different—sweet and fragrant, like clover or dandelion. Not like burning wood and charcoal and—
"Smoke."
"Mmh…?"
"Smoke." Kylla repeated, voice louder—and spun around, reaching again to grab at Karrie, half-yanking her out of the bed. Her sister yelped and cursed—their mother would have scolded her if she had heard. "Smoke!" The word was snapped this time as Kylla dragged Karrie to her feet. "Something's burning, Karrie!"
"Papa—?"
"No, it's not him! He and Mama are sleeping." Even as she was saying that, Kylla was moving across the room. She fished a pair of breeches and a shirt from the laundry bin and pulled them on quickly, discarding her sleeping gown, then tossed Karrie a set of clothes as well. "Anyway, can't you smell it?" Then, "it smells like when old man Benson's barn caught fire last summer! Don't you remember?"
Finally Karrie seemed to understand why she was being jerked out of bed and shoved into clothes at such an ungodly hour. The blurry, sleepy look in her eyes faded, her expression sharpening—and then flitting to worry, concern and finally fear.
Kylla wouldn't admit it yet, but she was afraid, too.
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Can you save me now?
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There was a faintly glowing light showing through the crack under the door when they moved to exit the bedroom.
Though neither of them had been through a house fire before, they both still recognized that light as a bad thing. There was a long pause just in front of the door before either of them began to move again: Kylla pushed Karrie, sliding in front of her little sister—then reached out to grasp the doorknob.
It was a mistake.
Pain flared in her hand and lanced up to her shoulder. She jerked her arm back, cradling her hand to her chest even as Karrie pulled on her other arm, turning her around. Kylla hissed when the other girl insisted on looking at her injury: a harsh, deep, fire-red burn all across her palm and the inside of her fingers.
"This is bad, Kylla!"
"I know that, stupid!" She hissed in reply to Karrie's observation. She almost continued on to tell her sister her burns were the least of their worries, but it would have been very hard to say it with much conviction, considering the pain—like she was holding a red-hot fireplace poker by the wrong end and was unable to let it go. It hurt so much that it forced tears to her eyes and made her hand and arm tremble unstoppably, the movement beyond her control.
Taking her hand back, Kylla clutched it against her chest again. Her being hurt couldn't stop them. They needed to get outside, or they would both most likely burn to death.
With that in mind, she hurried over to the bed and grabbed a pillow, upending it to strip the pillowcase off of it. Then she moved back to the door and reached for the knob again, this time with her good hand wrapped thickly in the cushioning fabric. The heat still seeped through to her skin, but it made it tolerable, at least.
Taking a breath, she steeled herself, made sure Karrie was safely behind her again, and then finally cracked the bedroom door open.
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I am with you
I will carry you through it all
I won't leave you, I will catch you
When you feel like letting go
Cause you're not, you're not alone
-
When flames didn't immediately jump out at them and spill into the room, Kylla took it as a good sign.
Pulling the door open further, she then released the knob and used the pillowcase to wrap around her injured hand—the normally soft-feeling fabric instead felt like hot needles against her damaged skin and muscle, but at least the wound was covered for now. She could worry about bandaging it properly once they were safely outside, beyond the reach of the fire.
"Stay back." Kylla instructed, and stepped out into the hallway beyond their room.
Karrie, for once, didn't protest. Normally she hated it when Kylla bossed her around, even though she was the younger of the pair. She had a stubborn, prideful streak—even more so than Kylla did, and that was saying something. Now, though, she was too frightened to complain that Kylla was babying her, treating her like the little sister that she, in reality, was.
Kylla took a brief moment to be thankful for that. Arguing with Karrie was the last thing she wanted to do at that exact time and place—particularly when she looked upward and the entire ceiling in the corridor was full of crackling, licking flames.
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Your heart is full of broken dreams
Just a fading memory
And everything's gone but the pain carries on
-
Brown eyes pinned on the ceiling, watching the fire travel along the timbers above her. She didn't want to go any further, didn't want to put herself or Karrie in that kind of danger, but… there wasn't really much of a choice, was there? Jumping from the window was practically a death sentence in itself—the ground below paved over with rough, rounded cobblestones and earth packed as hard as rock.
"Karrie, come on." After a long moment of consideration, Kylla waved her free hand, looking back toward Karrie and swallowing hard, trying to fight down her own fear—the same kind that was reflected so clearly in her sister's face. "Don't look up. Just walk. We have to get downstairs."
Her voice, wavering, betrayed how she actually felt beyond the façade of bravado.
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Lost in the rain again
When will it ever end
The arms of relief seem so out of reach
Beyond the roar of fire, they could both barely hear the dogs barking: two hounds, Dover and Lila, which their father had purchased for hunting, but his two young daughters had doted on, turning them into spoiled pets as well as working animals.
The dogs, despite being loved members of the family, were not permitted inside the house. They were outdoor animals, the same as the cows, goats, horses and chickens. The only one permitted inside every once-in-a-while was Cinders, the grey striped cat they kept around to keep the rodent population on the farm under control.
Unlike Dover and Lila, Cinders wasn't very friendly, and didn't put up with being touched or coddled. She was independent and half-feral, only hanging around because they fed her and their mother let her inside on miserable, rainy days when she came crying at the door, pathetic and waterlogged, looking like a drowned rat. Their mother had a soft spot for Cinders, despite her standoffishness.
"Dover's barking." Karrie was holding tight to Kylla's arm, walking close behind the other girl, and so Kylla heard her even though she was speaking quietly, almost a whisper, barely audible over the crackling flames.
"So's Lila." Kylla responded, eyes forward, focused on the floor beneath her feet and the hallway in front of them. She was treading slowly, carefully, despite the urgency to escape the house. Anything could happen. The floor could give out, the walls could collapse—the ceiling could cave in on them. Anything. "But they're outside, Karrie, so they're okay."
Karrie made a soft agreeing noise, but Kylla didn't acknowledge it, though she did frown a moment later when the younger girl whispered, "th—the ceiling, Kylla…!"
"I know." She let her gaze flit away from the floor, back to her sister for a split second before returning forward again. "Just keep walking. Don't let go of me, and keep walking."
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But I, I am here
-
It was at the top of the staircase that Karrie's sleeve caught fire. Ash and tiny coals floated freely through the air and really, they had been lucky to avoid them for as long as they had. Then, abruptly, Karrie yanked her grip away from Kylla's arm, making the older girl jerk in surprise and turn—
"Kylla, my shirt!"
Kylla didn't even bother to reply, instead just whirling to grab Karrie's sleeve, waving her hands and patting it down firmly, despite the pain that screamed at her from her injured palm. Thankfully, it didn't take long for the budding flames to go out again, leaving a burnt hole in Karrie's shirt but no serious burns on the skin beyond, just smears of ash along her arm and down to her wrist.
Kylla let out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding, then grabbed hold of her sister's arm. "Down the stairs. We're almost there."
But getting to the front door was still easier said than done, and had she realized what was to come, Kylla might have reconsidered simply returning to their bedroom and finding a way to escape through the window after all.
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I am with you
I will carry you through it all
I won't leave you, I will catch you
When you feel like letting go
Cause you're not, you're not alone
-
Three steps down the stairs the inevitable happened and the floor gave out.
Had this happened to her, Kylla might have dealt with it better. But rather than collapsing under her, it let go when she was a handful of steps beyond—causing Karrie to slip and fall through the crumbling floorboards, barely managing to catch hold of the edge at the last second and save herself from tumbling into the basement below.
"Karrie!" Kylla's voice came out high and rough, panicked. She whirled, scrambling back up the steps and flinging herself to grab hold of her sister's hands. "Hang on!"
But Karrie was no infant. She was only a year younger than Kylla, almost the same size, and though Kylla was a farming child and not unused to hard work and heavy lifting, she had never tried to heft something so close to her own weight. Between that and the angle she was at compared to Karrie—she couldn't do it. All she could do was hold on tightly in an attempt to keep the other girl from slipping farther and falling—
"I—I can't get up!"
Karrie's voice was as frantic as Kylla's, her words shrieked over the sound of the fire and the dogs and the screaming of the one of the horses, probably Finn, who was more nervous than the others, more prone to panicking—even though they were safely in the barn, away from the flames and smoke along with the goats and probably Cinders.
"K-Karrie—!"
Her hands, her grip was loosening. Kylla tried to adjust herself, tried to continue clinging to her sister, but Karrie was slipping and Kylla found herself being pulled farther toward the collapsed section of flooring, her head and shoulders now hanging over the edge.
Karrie clutched at her, hung onto her, but—
But—
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And I'll be your hope when you feel like it's over
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"Y-you have to let me go!"
"What? No!"
"Kylla, I said let me go!"
"Karrie, no!"
"Dammit—!"
The edges of the gaping hole in the stairs were crumbling, pulling them both deeper, and the smoke was gathering, choking and cloying and suffocating. They were both coughing, weakening. Kylla's grip was slipping. Karrie was falling. She was falling, and there seemed nothing her sister could do about it—but she couldn't just leave her, couldn't just let go, or Karrie would slip and fall. She would slip and fall and die!
But Karrie gave her little choice: her grip abruptly vanished.
"What are you doing?!" Though her sister let go, Kylla continued clinging to her as hard as she could, her good hand taking the brunt of her weight while the injured one screamed and throbbed and burned, forcing tears to her eyes once again.
This time, though, she wasn't crying just from the pain.
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And I will pick you up when your whole world shatters
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This had to be a dream—a nightmare. It couldn't be real. The house couldn't be on fire, couldn't be crumbling around them, and her sister couldn't be falling—couldn't be telling her to leave, to let go, to let her die.
She knew where Karrie was coming from. She could understand, deep in her heart, and she would have done the same thing, had their positions been reversed. If she didn't let go, they would both die there, but if she did—if she gave up on the other girl—then she had a chance of escaping, of making it out alive.
But could she live with herself, if she did?
Would she even want to?
"Karrie, hold on! Please hold on! Please!"
She was pleading desperately, trying to get Karrie to take hold of her arms again, so that she could try to pull her up. The chances of her managing it were slim, yes, but what else could she do? Karrie was her sister. Her sister, whom she had grown up with, played with, fought with ever since they were infants—the person she was the closest to in all the world, the one she loved more than anyone.
"Y-you've got to—Karrie, please—"
Karrie simply smiled up at her. "Let go, Kylla." She sounded calm again, though her face betrayed sadness and fear. "You can't die here, too. It'd—it'd be pointless. So let go, and get yourself out."
Kylla shook her head harshly, blinking against the tears that blurred her vision. "I can't just—"
Outside, the dogs had stopped barking—first Lila and then Dover. Finn, however, continued to shriek into the night, his voice high and frantic and sounding closer than it was before. Kylla barely noticed the difference, focused on Karrie as she was, until the front door shattered inward.
What—?
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And when you're finally in my arms
Look up and see love has a face
-
Heavy rattling and thudding against the main floor and up to the stairs would normally have been frightening in and of itself, but all things considered, Kylla pretty much ignored it, assuming that it was in some way the result of the fire. Karrie, however, seemed to see something that her older sister didn't.
"Kylla." She smiled again, her eyes sliding past Kylla for a moment and pinning on something beyond the other girl's shoulder before returning to her sibling's face. Her voice, previously betraying fear, went strangely calm. She sounded almost content and happy. "Let go." She repeated softly, reassuring, "you'll be fine, but you have to let go."
"I said no, Karrie—!"
"It'll be okay." Karrie interrupted, followed by a statement that made Kylla frown in confusion, clearly directed toward someone other than herself: "please take care of her for me."
And then, before she could react, something grabbed hold of the back of her tunic and jerked. She was torn away from Karrie, her grip too weak to combat the sudden yank, and a panicked scream rose in her throat as she watched her little sister fall and vanish into the dark.
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I am with you
I will carry you through it all
I won't leave you, I will catch you
When you feel like letting go
Cause you're not, you're not alone
-
"Karrie! KARRIEKARRIEKARRIE! KARRIE!"
:S-stop struggling! She's gone! I'm sorry, but she's gone!:
The voice seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, echoing inside her head as she flailed and tried to claw her way back to the hole where Karrie had fallen. The grip on the back of her shirt wouldn't loosen, though, wouldn't let go despite her desperate struggles, instead tightening as she was dragged backward across the floor toward the now-ruined front door.
"KARRIE! KARRIE—!"
The more she screamed, the deeper the smoke got into her lungs, and after only a few seconds she was reduced to choking coughs to violent and rough that she felt as if she might throw up. That was the last thing she needed, though, and somehow, through sheer force of will, she managed to keep the contents of her stomach right where they belonged.
And then the grasping force behind her pulled her roughly over the door frame and outside, stopping only once she was a safe hundred yards from the inferno that had used to be her home.
The grip on the back of her tunic released then, leaving her floundering in the grass, gasping for air, still choking on smoke and ash. After a few moments she finally found her way to her hands and knees—and that was when she lost control and emptied her stomach into the dirt.
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And I will be your hope (not alone)
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Something was hovering over her, so close she could smell singed hair and horseflesh. In her half-delirious state, confusion took over and she reached up with one hand to shove at the soft nose that was nudging at her shoulder. "Stay away from me, Finn! This is all your fault!"
:Finn?: A startled snort came from the horse, who backed up a handful of steps.
Kylla heard this, but didn't see it. Her eyes were full of soot and tears, making it next thing to impossible to make anything out. She didn't care, though—all she knew was that Finn had backed off, which was what she had wanted. The stupid animal had already killed her sister—and now he was all over her, concern and worry and care. Where had that care been when Karrie had fallen to her death?
Having already thrown up, Kylla now sat back on her heels, lifting her good hand to rub at her eyes until they were clear enough for her to look around.
In front of her, the farmhouse burned, flames licking high into the sky. Karrie was still in there. And when she looked around, still blinking against the stinging ash, she didn't see her parents either. Were they still in the house, too? Dead, along with her sister? Was she the only one who had made it out, pulled to safety by—
By what?
Now that her mind wasn't spinning quite so much, she knew it wasn't Finn who had broken down the door and come crashing into the inferno to rescue her. The horse wasn't smart enough to do that, even if he hadn't been nervous as a rabbit. And Karrie had spoken to someone, in the end… hadn't she? Someone other than Kylla herself.
While she was considering this, something furry approached from the side, and the next thing she knew, Dover and Lila were huddled up against her side, shaking and terrified. Kylla understood how they felt, but pushed them away anyway, turning instead to look behind her, where a large white shape was shining in moonlight, dappled red by the glare of the flames.
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And I will pick you up
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She had been born and raised in Valdemar, so of course she immediately knew what the silver shape before her was: not an ordinary horse, despite its' appearance. A Companion. One of the mythical horselike beings who Chose and Bonded to future-Heralds. Shimmering white with haunting blue eyes, they were unmistakable.
"You…"
The Companion shifted a little, seeming unsure, before finally lowering its' head toward the ground a little. :My name is Piper.: The Voice was distinctly female, now that Kylla was actually paying attention. :And… your sister…:
"You left her to die." The words came out soft, almost emotionless, disbelieving.
:There was nothing either of us could have done, Kylla.:
"So she was meant to die, then?!" Piper flinched visibly at the snapped, demanding question, her head dipping even lower in the grass. "How could you do it? How could you just—abandon her? She was your Chosen, right?! You should have fought to save her!"
There was a long pause after that before Piper responded. She seemed surprised at something, and her head came up again, her tail, singed and half-burnt-off lashing behind her for a moment. Then she snorted, shaking her head—a very human mannerism for something to very clearly equine.
:Kylla, you seem to misunderstand.: Piper stepped forward finally, then lowered her head once more to meet Kylla's eyes. :Karrie was not meant to be mine. I am here for you and no one else. Kylla, you are my Chosen.:
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And I will be your hope
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The abrupt flooding of unconditional love that surged into her on Piper's words made Kylla gasp out loud, made her chest ache, made her forget all about the burn on her hand and the stinging ash in her eyes. It made her forget, for an all-to-brief moment, that she had just lost her entire family to the horrors of a fire in the night. It made her forget the pain and the blame that she had pinned on the Companion for the death of her sister.
When she didn't move, though, Piper paced forward to stand next to her and nuzzled into her cheek, her nose smearing the charcoal that coated Kylla's skin from being so close to the flames—from throwing herself down to try to save Karrie, and from being bodily dragged from the house only moments afterward.
:I am sorry.: Piper repeated softly. :I am so sorry.:
The pain returned on those words, an ache set so deep inside of her that she doubted it would ever fade away, and wasn't sure she would even want it to.
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And I will be your hope
-
When the help that Piper had mentioned finally arrived—two Heralds seated atop their own Companions, followed by a brigade of men from the nearby village—they set to work immediately, setting up a chain of volunteers with buckets to get water from the nearby river. The fire was roaring so strongly that it couldn't be put out, but they could at least keep it from spreading. It would have to burn itself out.
Kylla watched them work for the few minutes that she stayed there, before the Heralds ushered her into up into Piper's singed saddle: she clung there, still unable to see properly, and thanked the stars that she was a decent rider. Then they were off to the nearest town to get her to a Healer, she and Piper and one of the Heralds as an escort—Dover and Lila trailing behind for lack of anywhere else to go.
In front of her, her new life beckoned.
Behind her, her old life burned.
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Slowly fading away
Your lost and so afraid
Where is the hope in a world so cold?
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