Loneliness, Sage mused, could destroy a man. She had been sitting under an oak tree once again pondering upon life and how pointless it all seemed to be. A bit depressing for a 17 year old girl to be thinking but Sage thrived on pessimism and sarcasm. She liked to think she was also rather realistic all things considered. A mutant with a potentially lethal ability living among normal human beings didn't bode well for anybody. Glancing around the park she had wandered into she watched as parents pushed their children on swings and another group of kids were playing what appeared to be a rather violent version of tag. Pushing a strand of hair behind her ear she tried to ignore the memories threatening to surface. She had once played like them. Been loved and cuddled by her parents, but that wasn't the case anymore. After her mother had died in a car accident her father had taken to drinking himself to death. Alcohol poisoning, the doctors had told her. More like a broken heart that just could not go on without her mother. Her parents had been only children so like any other orphan Sage had been handed over to the foster system at the age of 15. Not all the homes had been bad, but enough were that she had given up hope on ever finding a real home. She had ran away after accidentally giving the last homes eldest son third degree burns on his arm after he had tried to grope her in the shower. She probably should have freaked out a bit more than she did after discovering her ability to control, create, and for lack of better term become fire. However, Sage had always been weird so she took it in stride. This was merely another thing that made her strange, made her an outcast.