Hey guys! I'm back… for part two of Chasing Butterflies, narrated by Skye! Here is chapter one. Enjoy and let me know your thoughts! Wow, it sure is strange narrating from her point of view. No more profanity warnings! XD
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
1. Ashes
Fire is wild and terrible, burning everything it touches and turning it to charred black and smoke and white ashes.
Fire is beautiful and brings light to everything it touches, glowing orange embers and fiery radiance illuminating darkness.
Fire is pain and memories I don't want to confront. Fire marks the start of a new beginning.
Fire is a dance of yin and yang, both terrible and beautiful and ugly, wild and free, the beginning and the end, all writhing together in a dangerously enchanting harmony. That's part of why it's so treacherous. It deceives you and plays tricks on you, like tricks of light.
Fire is why I am who I am. It has impacted my life more than most people. It was six years ago, when I was seven.
I wake up to the acrid smell of smoke wrapping around my lungs and squeezing, smothering me. Coughing, my lungs aching, my throat sandpaper, as my eyes adjust—not to the darkness, but to the fiery light dancing under my door, highlighting the edges against shadows. Run run run to it and fling it open: heat searing my face, my eyelashes and brows burning, a monster of flame and light and darkness twisting about the house.
"Mom!" I scream. "Dad! Help!" One of the walls near me collapses with a shower of white-hot sparks and hissing. I jump away and stumble to the ground, burying my face in my hands, trying to hide from the heat. But it cannot be evaded. Their bedroom is right across the hall, right through those leaping flames. I run, run run run, darting around tendrils of fire that reach for me from the walls like ghostly fingers—my hair catches flame and I scream at the top of my weary lungs as fire streaks back from my head like a banner.
What did Mom say to do if I ever catch on fire?
Stop, drop, and roll. I fling myself on the ground, but there's fire there too, all over me. I'm still screaming as I roll, but then there's a jolt and suddenly the ground isn't under me anymore. My voice runs out, my breath catches, my hands reach out as if for someone to save me as the banister crumbles and I plummet down the side of the staircase. My stomach jumps in my mouth but can't save me. Tears can't save me. No one can save me.
There is a crunch, agonizing pain searing my body, and then nothing.
I take a deep, shuddering breath. Six years, but it still haunts me. My parents died in the fire that night. I myself broke several bones and was scarred from the flames that burned me. Of course, I look perfectly healthy now. Aunt Angelina was rich enough to pay for plastic surgery to get rid of the ugly scars marring my white skin, and my bones healed flawlessly together with her help—she saw to it that she treated me herself.
It's the scars inside that take the longest to heal, if they ever do.
There is a knock on my door, and after a moment, the butler, Tanaka, enters with a tray of tea and pastries. "Good morning, my lady," he says with a smile when he sees that I'm awake. He sets the tray down on my desk and opens the drapes at the window, sending sunlight slanting down onto my bed. "May will be up to help you get dressed in a moment."
"Thank you, Tanaka. She'll also take care of the tea. You may leave now."
Tanaka gives a slight bow and backs out the door. A second later, May bursts in. As the maid, it's her job to clean the manor, but as I am a girl and the butler is male, the duty of dressing and washing me also falls to her.
"Hello, Miss Skye," she giggles. May is like a little bundle of energy—dressed in a dark dress with a white apron, but a ball of energy all the same.
I ease my way out of bed and stand beside it, yawning, as May quickly sheds my nightdress, eyes lowered respectfully. Even after six years of having servants and May helping me dress and undress, I still have to fight to resist the impulse to cover my breasts when they are exposed. They are long gone, but I can also feel the scars all over my body, invisible but still burning.
"How was your sleep?" May asks me cheerfully as she scuttles around me, buttoning my corset-style shirt and slipping a studded black belt through my designer jeans.
I look up at her disdainfully. "You're my servant. It shouldn't matter to you."
"Your health is important to us, my lady," she replies, but I only scoff. In six years, I've learned how to act like a noble, even though I'm not one. Angelina Durless, my aunt, is descended from a baron and is very rich, but my mother was only her half-sister and didn't inherit the same fortunes. I've become accustomed to being upper class, with anything I want, whenever I want it.
"What time does school start?" It sounds like an incredibly normal thing to say. I wanted to go to a private all-girls boarding school, but Aunt Angelina was convinced it would be better for me to socialize and mix with both sexes while being educated. According to her, the fire shouldn't make me shut others out, even if I'd rather be withdrawn. Also in her opinion, I've become a spoiled brat, although she put it much more nicely, and I need a dose of what hard reality is like.
"8:00 a.m. You have plenty of time for breakfast, my lady," May answers with a beaming smile.
"Make me tea."
Her smile falters. "Miss Skye, perhaps Mr. Tanaka—"
I shoot her an icy glare, full of indifference and hostility, so that her voice stumbles to a halt. Without meeting my eyes, she does my bidding, her hands shaking as she tries to pour it effortlessly. I make a vague noise of disgust when she spills and knocks over the sugar bowl. "You're useless. Get out and wait for me in the washroom."
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Miss Skye!" she wails, her hazel eyes wide and shining with unshed tears beneath her glasses at my clipped tone. Looking genuinely remorseful, she dips her head and practically flees the room.
I sigh and call for Tanaka. "Clean up this mess," I order once he arrives. "I'll join Aunt Angelina for breakfast."
He smiles wryly and takes a moment to run a hand over his slicked-back hair, brushing any stray strands away. "We could have avoided this mess, my lady, if you had allowed me to make you the tea in the first place," he informs me in exasperation. "You know that she is rather uncoordinated."
I glare at him. "I may not be the authority in the house, but Aunt Angelina strictly told you servants to do my bidding. I wanted to see if she's improved at all. Apparently not. Useless maid. Maybe she'll do better prettifying me up." I yawn and stretch my arms behind my back as I saunter out of the room and into the washroom, where May is patiently waiting.
"Is there any particular style you'd like today?" she asks cheerfully, her mood rebounded after my earlier reproaching.
"It doesn't matter." It's not like I care about my appearance anyways.
May squeals at the prospect of getting to choose my style and begins to work enthusiastically with my dark strands of hair: combing out the tangles, smoothing it down with lotion, styling a few locks to curl here or there, sweeping my bangs to the side, and coating everything in hairspray. It's loose over my shoulders and tousled, but in a stylish way.
I take the time to assess myself critically in the mirror while she works. I've never thought of myself as pretty. Maybe in some parallel universe where there was no fire that marred me, I might have grown to think I was attractive, but now I know that everything I see in the mirror is a fake: a result of plastic and stretched skin and doctors aiming to make me glamorous. It's not natural beauty; it's synthetic, a Barbie doll of Skye. My skin is pale white without a single freckle or mole marring its surface, too smooth. It gives me an ethereal look, like I'm not from this world, but some alien species invading it. The only things natural about me are two things. One: my hair, which is a strange dark grey colour, almost charcoal, with strands of silver highlighting some locks. I was bald after the fire, but my hair grew back and now it's once again long and lustrous, mostly straight but with a faint wave in the middle. It doesn't look natural either, even though it is. What kind of thirteen year old girl has grey hair? Two: My eyes, which are the colour of an indigo sky and peer out guardedly from beneath my shaggy bangs—an odd shade of dark blue that can be mistaken for sapphire.
May adds a touch of silver eyeliner to my lids and then sweeps a mascara brush over my eyelashes, which are already long enough to start with. Then she smiles at me and puts a hand on my shoulder. "You're all ready for school, Miss Skye. Miss Angelina is waiting for you downstairs in the formal dining room."
"Good morning, darling!" Aunt Angelina greets me with a placid smile when I arrive. She's stunning as usual: red hair hanging straight to just beneath her chin, her V-shaped bangs with the locks carefully arranged; dark maroon-brown eyes decked in mascara, eye shadow and eyeliner; red lipstick meticulously applied to her full lips; her crimson coat as immaculate as ever. There's a reason that people call her 'Madam Red'.
"Good morning," I reply sullenly, seating myself at the other end of the table, across from Angelina. It's absurd that despite the two of us being the only ones to use the formal dining room, the long table still seats up to twenty people and there is an elongated distance between the two heads, so that we have to talk extra loudly if we want the other to hear.
"Your first day of school!" she gushes, almost shouting from excitement. Her hand not currently busy with a utensil flutters with enthusiasm as she flips her hair back and smiles, flashing her perfect white teeth. "Aren't you excited, Skye?"
I flash her a scathing look. "Why in particular would I be excited, Aunt Angelina? I have been to public school before." Needless to say, I hated every moment of it. "A transfer does not change very much at all, other than the rather trivial fact that there will be new students and teachers to collaborate with. I'm certain, however, that the pupils will all retain the same level of idiocy and the teachers the same level of incapability as those at any other public school I have attended."
"Oh, Skye," Aunt Angelina says sadly, all fervour gone. "Please don't be such a pessimist. You do know that I'm only doing this with the best of intentions in mind."
"They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions," I reply loftily, scowling. "I don't grasp how you believe sending me to school with imbeciles is going to help me gain a proper education. Honestly, any private school would be adequate, even if it didn't board. Please, Aunt Angelina? I've entertained public school for six years—"
"And you will endure it for another year," my aunt says, setting down her fork and knife and folding her arms together. She meets my eyes unblinkingly; mine are filled with resentment and defiance, but hers are softer: pools of exasperation, worry, and, undeniably, love. "Skye, I will not change my mind. It would be best if you would just accept it and try to make the best of it," she says gently. "You are going to the school I have chosen for you today and that's that."
I take advantage of the distance between us to pretend that I don't hear and shovel another forkful of pancake soaked in syrup and whipped cream into my mouth. I chew slowly and thoroughly, but even though it should be sickly sweet, all I can taste are ashes burning my tongue and the ravaged remains from a fire, like my heart and soul and body.
Ashes, all of them.