Disclaimer:
I don't own KHR! or the cover picture.
The house was on fire.
Fire that danced and flickered and burned and scorched, licking the wooden framework with hungrily lashing tongues of crimsonscarletwhite-hotsizzling-
. . .
Fran sucked in a shuddery gasp, jolting upright.
Where was she?
The last thing she remembered was-
. . .
The house was on fire.
She had to get out, she had to get out now or she'd be gone, she'd be gonegonegonedead.
But wait.
Just wait a second.
Who would care?
That thought struck her suddenly, suddenly as she tumbled out the window and landed ungracefully into a particularly bushy plants.
Who would care because she had no one to care because they were all gonegonegonedead and-
. . .
White-washed hospital walls greeted her upon awakening, and the putrid odor of strong antiseptics invaded her senses forcibly.
"Miss? Miss are you alright-"
. . .
The house was on fire.
Standing there in front of her former residence (not home, no not home, because what did someone like her know of homes and belonging and family? it was all uselessuselessuselessunnecessary), one arm gingerly supporting broken ribs and a fractured arm from the fall, she could do nothing else but stare.
Because wow was this a major adrenaline rush
and she could hear her heart going thump-thump-thumpity-thump
faster and faster and faster while
her knees felt weak and her muscles turned to gelatin and
she slumped onto the ground with her strings cut
an empty marionette unbound by the exhilaration of the near-death experience that was so unlike
her usual dullboringapatheticmonotonous haze of days
and finally her head cleared and she could think and
yet all she could think was-
. . .
A concerned orderly peered down at Fran, worriedly fluttering around in a fit.
"Oh, dear, must be the shock, yes it must be, now just wait here while I go and fetch you some water, m'kay?"
Opening her dry, chapped lips to speak, the patient croaked out-
. . .
The house was on fire.
And boy was it glorious.
Fascinated, temporarily forgetting where she was and what had happened
and who she was and who was watching because they were always watching and waiting
tentative fingers were outstretched towards the fiery flaring flames that flashed and sparked and cast soft shadows of cinders and sowed ashes in it's destructive wake.
Like a phoenix rising, like a damnation from above, like a cleansing of the past…
It made her blood sing and her heartbeat race and her skin tingle with heat and pain, pain that reminded her she was alive.
Beautiful, she decided.
The sight of the fire was beautiful.
Now if she could just hold some of that beauty for herself, capture it, snatch it, cradle it tenderly in her hands as she stares with eyes reflecting the glowing embers...
That was how the police found her.
Standing among the singed grass in her former front yard, staring with an unfocused but wholly absorbed gaze at the spectacle of the burning house, hands held in front of her as if to reach for the flames, and the neighbors who'd alerted the fire department speaking off to the side in hushed whispers and throwing furtive glances at the 'strange loner child'.
"What do you mean she's an orphan? Who has she been living with, then? Surely a child living alone would've been reported to Child Services by now."
"Ah, well, officer, you see-"
. . .
"Miss Frances A. Brume? I see you've woken up. I'm Jacques Lafayette; I work for the Childcare Services of France. I'm afraid that the fire burned down your house, and as you have no legal guardian anyway, you are now a ward of the state. Meaning… well, I'm terribly sorry about this, Miss Brume, but you'll have to go to an orphanage."
Fran Amarante Brume, a tealette child who was 11 years of age, looked blankly at the smiling blond man, whose smile gradually shrunk as time wore on as she never answered.
Then she spoke, arms laying limply at her sides, a cast on one and a bulky plaster on her ribs, eyes placid and unreadable.
"Will there be fire?"
. . .
The house was on fire.
It was on fire because of her.
Fran glanced down at the box of matches clutched tightly in her fingers, and grinned crookedly, like one who was unused to showing such facial expressions.
Because of her.
And now she was finally content.
Something interesting had happened.
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I don't even know anymore. This chapter just kinda begged to be written. So yeah, it's a Fran who is basically indifferent to life because everything seems boring. Then one day she's playing around with matches since she's a rebellious little preteen like that, and her house burns down. That day, she discovered the adrenaline rush from nearly dying and decides that it was interesting, or at least not boring like usual, and thus a adrenaline addict sometimes-suicidal pyromaniac Fran was born. Yay. Oh, and as a warning, the way I write will probably change often from chapter to chapter. Some chapters are very dramatic and angsty, which I tend to write in a haphazard fluid-format style, while others are much more plain-spoken and descriptive to set a scene or get some plot point over with.
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