Fire and ice- a rise of the guardian's fanfiction

The start of it all

Fire raged across the small town, swallowing up anything and everything in its path. People fled from their small cabins screaming, picking up their children and leaving everything else behind.

One cabin, bigger than the rest, had just begun to catch fire. A family of four was fleeing. The mother and father had bags of belonging with them, being as greedy as they were. The two children, both girls, were the last to escape. The eldest girl grabbed the younger girls hand to hurry her along. The younger girl, who looked no more than five, had tears streaking her face.

"My… my dolly…! Desmona, my dolly is still in there!" The little girl hiccupped. The older one, Desmona, picked up the little girl and wiped away her tears.

"I promise you, Jasmine, as soon as we escape, I will buy you a new dolly, even better than your old one! How about that?" Desmona smiled sympathetically at Jasmine and received a nod from the small girl.

Desmona began to run to catch up with everyone else, until she heard a scream. She froze. The scream came again. It was the scream of a child.

"Mother!" Desmona ran to her mother and dropped Jasmine into her arms. The mother got one look in Desmona's eyes and she knew she couldn't change the eldest child's mind.

Desmona raced to the direction of the screaming. She reached a house on the verge of collapsing, and through a hole in the wall, she saw a boy that could have been no older than her little sister. Desmona crawled carefully through the hole in the wall, nearly catching her skirt on fire. She made her way over burning pieces of debris and moved to the boy. He wore smoldering pajamas and his face was covered in ash and grime. Tears made a clean trail through the ash as the boy sobbed.

Desmona wrapped her arms around the terrified boy and whispered calming words to him as her eyes dashed from fire after fire in the room.

"What's your name?" She asked soothingly.

"J-James," The boy sobbed.

"All right, James, here's what were going to do, on the count of three, I'm going to run through that opening there and toss you through the wall. As soon as you make it outside, run to the rest of the village. Got that?" Desmona started to stand as James nodded.

"One…" Desmona hoisted James into her arms, "Two…" She took one step forward, "Three!" She raced ahead.

She nearly made it through the hole, but instead—she tripped over a burning, fallen log. James flew out of her arms and through the wall. He crawled outside and looked back at Desmona with fear in his eyes. Desmona tried to get up, but the pain from the burns on her leg was to great, and she fell again.

"Run!" Desmona shrieked in agony. James' eyes widened. He nodded, turned, and sprinted away into the waiting arms of a mother who still cared. She flashed Desmona a look of thanks, and turned to run with her son.

Despite the overwhelming pain, Desmona smiled. She was happy. She knew she was going to die. She was just glad she died to save a life.

And with this thought, a burning log fell directly on top of her. The world quickly faded from a burning, agonizing red heat, to soft black warmth.

After all these years of wondering, Desmona finally got to know what death felt like, and truthfully, it wasn't half bad.

She floated in the soft, never-ending darkness for a bit; pain only a distant memory, before she fell into the welcoming arms of death.