There was a girl, no more than fourteen years old. She wore a simple blue sundress, no shoes, and around her neck was a delicate silver chain with a tiny amber pendant in the shape of a flame on it. Her eyes were larger than most people's, and were an odd, clear silver shade in the iris. Her eyelashes were long, dark, and thick, and she blinked them down and up on autopilot. Her mouth, edged with pretty pink cupid's bow lips, was partially open and small rushes of air sank in and out as she inhaled and exhaled reflexively. Her hair was chin-length, a chestnut-brown that had the potential to gleam golden-red if it had been clean...
But it wasn't. None of her was.
Her dress was torn, ragged, and filthy; her bare feet callused and stained; her hair caked with dust and debris; her eyes dazed sightlessly as she stared off into the distance and her luxurious eyelashes layered with dark grey powder.
Ash rained down like thick, oppressive flakes of smoky snow.
Around her a small town was in ruins; buildings were mere shells of their former states, burnt-black bones and fragments of clothing covering them were strewn all over the place, and the ground was blanketed in at least six solid inches of cinder and slag.
And at her rough-edged fingernail tips golden-azure flames flickered in and out of existence.
She hadn't meant for this to happen, really.
But... the boys had insulted her. Again. Called her 'freak' and 'orphan' and 'fire-starter' and even 'demon'. And the adults never helped, never stepped in; they only watched with cold, hateful eyes nearby and said 'Let the arsonist bitch have it.'
Being treated like that every single day, again and again and again- it had been too much, and she had lost control. Maybe, she mused as she idly cocked her head to the side, they had deserved it? After all, they had been the ones to ostracize her, call her names, beat her and break her and treat her like a monster. Right? It wasn't her fault she had been born with the ability to control and create fire hotter than any furnace. Of course it wasn't theirs either, but they didn't have to be so cruel about it did they? But humans were fickle, she knew, and hateful and angry and oh, oh so jealous and fearful of what they couldn't ever even hope to harness to their own will.
She blinked again, and her small pink tongue darted out to wet her dry lips, accidentally taking in a small lump of ash.
It tasted of fire and wood and, strangely enough, pain. Could pain have a taste? If it did, this was it, she thought.
When wind fluttered and feathers rustled and the ash shifted, parting for a new set of feet, she didn't react, being too busy in her own thoughts.
Flames danced harmlessly over the skin of her right hand as she raised her palm upwards so she could see it, the ones on her left hand mingling when she connected them in a cup-like position. The fire acted like it was in a bowl, swirling and twisting and flickering outward but never quite jumping away. "What am I?" she asked softly to the air. "To attract such hate and disgust?"
The ash continued falling from the sky in the hushed silence, and when the chalky powder came in contact with the flames curling and harmlessly burning on her hands it melted away into nothing.
She blinked in mute surprise when a gentle hand brushed the soot off of her hair and patted it off of her shoulders. The stranger's footsteps were muted- almost silent- as he circled her until he came to a stop directly in front of her. She found herself staring at a grey poet-style shirt-covered chest, and slowly lifted her gaze, finding the V of the fabric and then travelling over the exposed skin of his chest, neck, jaw, cheeks, and finally meeting his gray-blue eyes that were backlit by some fleeting too-bright pale light she couldn't quite see. "Darling..." the man drawled sadly with an unfamiliar accent as he pushed a layer of ash off of his own dirty-blond hair, "You've got it all wrong."
"I do?" she murmured, wondering. "But... that's all that I've ever experienced... Surely, if I hadn't done anything to warrant such treatment when I knew what I was doing, it was because of this?" she raised her flaming hands to him in explanation. "Why else would they hate me so?"
He let out a heavy sigh, and as she looked into his eyes she saw sympathy and something like pain. "Love, mud monkeys- humans to you- hate what they don't understand, yes?"
She nodded slowly in acknowledgement of his point.
"They didn't understand. If they had they wouldn't have dared do any of what I suspect they did. You have a gift, one that should be treasured." He raised his arms and she instinctually flinched, but didn't back away when his warm, rough palms carefully wrapped around her hands. Her eyes went wide, shocked, and she looked down to where he was holding her hands. She expected to see- well, she didn't know what she expected to see, but whatever it was it certainly wasn't her mixed-color golden-azure flames caressing the man's tanned skin like they were welcoming an old friend and not harming him at all.
"...How?!" she let out in a breathless gasp, eyes locked on where she were linked. She had seen what her fire had done to the residents of her 'home' village; when they had touched the residents they had seared the flesh- muscles, skin, tendons and all- off of the bones until all that was left were charred white/black sticks.
She looked up again when he chuckled lowly and let her go. "I'm not human, darling," his eyes gleamed with that something other, and she desperately searched them for answers she didn't find.
Her curved, defined chestnut eyebrows furrowed slightly. "You're... not?" she asked. "But then what are you? What else could you be?"
The stranger's lips curved into a smirk, and he leaned forward, raising one hand further to carefully cup her cheek.
Her eyes left his as the air split, the ash being thrust forward and backward and to each side as it was forcefully pushed away from materializing structures.
Huge, grand cream wings with pale periwinkle edging and darker shading near the bases burst out of his back, arching in a steep curve around them and blocking the still-falling remaings of the town. They rustled, shimmered, and looked like they would be satin-soft. "My name is Balthazar," the newly-named man told her quietly but solemnly, and his soft words held a weight she couldn't describe. "Angel of the Lord, formerly Treasurer of the Armory. What, little human girl, is your name?"
She blinked, and cast her eyes around, looking at the long, graceful, silken feathers with awe. They were beautiful. "...My name?" she murmured after a moment, finally catching his question. "My mother named me Nefas, for what I was to her."
The angel's light eyes darkened in something akin to anger, only it was much, much stronger, and eons older. "Do you like that name?" he asked with what sounded like forced calm.
She cocked her head to the side, and blinked up at him slowly in bewilderment. "...Do I like it?" she mused, surprised. "...I don't think I do, but it's all I've ever been..." she looked up to him suddenly, breaking his hold on her jaw, and pulled her lower lip into her mouth for a moment to bite at it nervously a few times before letting it go. "Will you give me a better one? A new name?"
Balthazar raised his eyebrows at her, but in his eyes something... maybe satisfaction... flashed. "I suppose I could," he ceded. "Very well, darling. Your new name will be... Gemma. What do you think about that?"
Gemma smiled up at him, and nodded slightly. "I like it," she replied, and her voice trembled a bit. No one had ever given her anything- well, except for her pendant that a traveling peddler had thought 'matched' her- at all, and now this- this Angel just out of the blue gives her an entirely new identity? She fell forward and, for the first time in her life, initiated physical contact by way of wrapping her thin, malnourished arms around Balthazar and hugging him- or his upper waist, as the case may be; she was rather unfortunately short- as tightly as she could. "Thank you, Balthazar," she murmured earnestly, and after a moment of tense silence the angel hummed and rested his own arms loosely across the back of her shoulders.
"You're welcome, darling. Now, I have an offer to make of you..."
