Okay so apparently no body got my little play on words, as nobody knows what Life of Pi is, but it's a bestselling book about some kid named Picine who gets stuck on a boat with a tiger or something like that… I don't really know much about it, but it's pretty famous… Anyways! On to the story!

Chapter 11: Life of Skye

I supposed that had I been slightly more conscious at the time, I would have wondered why I wasn't burning to a crisp. As it happens, I'm what people on this planet call a Fire User. Anybody can use magic, like the way that Sora does, but on this planet, which is called Dawn's Oceans by the way, some people are born with an extraordinary power with a certain element. I was born with such power with fire, and so the flames didn't burn me as they would most others. So, now with that explained, I suppose that I should explain the rest of my life.

My earliest memories come from a time before I was born. That's impossible, I know, but my mother told me the stories of what happened all the time, starting even from before I could understand her words, so even though the images that I remember are imagined, they still feel like memories. My father came to Dawn's Oceans to look into some planetary disturbance or something, and met my mother. She always told me that he was the only man she'd ever truly loved, and I think that he must have been a wonderful man for her to say that about him. It didn't take long for them to fall in love, but he was royalty on another planet and so they couldn't be together. When he returned to his home planet, she came quietly with him as a seamstress looking for work in his city. I always pictured my father as some sort of Prince Charming, and his planet as some sort of perfect fairy tale castle, but if what Dax has said was true, then my father was Ansem and the planet that I was to be born on was Hollow Bastion. I think that's a horrible name for a planet, but on with my story: They met often in secret, my parents, and one day my mother became pregnant. She gave birth to a boy nine months later, and my father took him into the castle as an orphan. It hurt my mother that he refused to tell anyone that this boy was theirs, she said she never understood why he kept their love hidden. Around the birth of my brother, Dax, my father began to change. He stopped wanting to see my mother, and when he did, he hurt her, verbally mostly. About a year later, when she told him that she was pregnant again, he went into a fit of rage and threatened to kill her. She stopped seeing him after that. I was born, and my father found out about me when I was a week old from a woman in the court who had been to see my mother about mending a dress. My father was furious that I was alive, and he demanded that he have custody of me. My mother refused, saying that he's taken her son from her and he wouldn't take her daughter too. He went into another rage and my mother ran away, looking for a way to leave the planet. She returned to Dawn's Ocean when I was a month old, and she raised me on the southern island, Gova. The two of us led a fairly normal life, until my mother became sick when I was still only young. The healers said that she'd contracted something in Hollow Bastion and that it had remained dormant until I was six years old.

My mother died when I was ten. No one was there for her in her final moments. I was out in the market place buying food for dinner, and when I came back, she wasn't breathing anymore. I spent the afternoon crying over it, until I realized that I was an orphan and if anyone found me, I'd most certainly be sent to live with my father. That was the last thing I wanted, so I took all the money I could find, a change of clothes and a little bit of food and I set out. I went to the port city, to the same market I'd been browsing that morning. I thought I was a woman, and I thought I'd be able to get work. I was ten, and I was very wrong. I remember my first night, because it was the first time I met 'the crew'. They were a handful of kids, orphans like me, who worked together to steal enough food to survive. They said they'd help me learn the ways of street living, and in return, I used my money to buy them food when they couldn't get enough for themselves. I spent a month with them, at which time I ran out of money. After that, Raggi, the leader of the group, said that I wasn't a good enough thief to run with them and since I had no more money, I was of no further use to them, so the little group of five abandoned me while I slept. From that time on, I was alone. I ate enough to survive, but I usually went to bed hungry.

Six months into my life as a lone street kid, I met a boy named Torne. He was the same age as me. I was looking to steal from the baker, and he was eyeing some of the treats in the window when I arrived that morning. We agreed to help each other out; I'd distract the baker, and he'd snatch a loaf of bread and some pastries. It worked wonderfully: I did an amazing job at distracting them, enough so that Torne had time to rearrange the pastries on the sheet and the bread basket so that the baker didn't even realize that he'd been stolen from until he found out that he was short money that night. He was quick and quiet, and I had that cute little girl thing going for me, so all worked out well. I showed him all my hiding places, little nooks to disappear into when I was caught and had to run. He showed me the alley that he made his home: always shielded from the wind, and even covered. While it seems like we might have got along well, we didn't. We argued constantly and spoke to each other only when we had too. But despite all that, we never went hungry when we worked together. I worked with Torne for a year and a half, in which time we became the veritable king and queen of thieves in the city. We made regular habit of taking more food than we needed, because we always had one of the younger orphans come to us at night looking for extra food. Generosity was the only thing Torne and I ever agreed on. We'd give the food to them, and in exchange, they owed us a favour, which usually ended up amounting to them helping us in one of our grander schemes; things like stealing clothes or fabrics for clothes, or sometimes money. Even if I was a little homeless kid, I knew I had it good the way things were. They always could have been worse.

I had just turned twelve and Torne and I cooked up the idea that we could steal a spellbook and magic ourselves enough food to last forever. It didn't work that way, but how were we to know that? A Water Master and his apprentice were on a pilgrimage to the Nymph Shrine, and were on their way through town. We spent forever planning the 'heist', as we'd called it. The master was old and the apprentice was clumsy. We figured that it would be easy. A few younger kids burst into their camp, which was just outside town, yelling and screaming. Torne kept the poor apprentice busy, while I went after the book. I snatched it and was on my way out, signaling to the others to go, when I found myself in a box of water. I tried to run through it, but it froze instantly so I ran into a solid wall of ice. The old man was must stronger than he looked, and I heard his voice through the box, asking me what I wanted with the book. Torne confessed what we wanted. The apprentice starting laughing at him and calling him stupid for thinking of something so stupid as making food with magic. The master shut him up, the box melted into the ground and he took back the book, giving Torne a bag of food and a coin to each of the little ones before sending us off. Even if we didn't get what we wanted, we'd gotten ourselves enough food for what would have been a filling meal for most people, but a few days worth of food for us. The next night, the apprentice followed to the alley. I set a fire and Torne and me sat down to eat when he arrived and started yelling at us. Thinking back on it, he was probably bitter that we got him in trouble with his master, and he was probably embarrassed by that fact that Torne was so easily able to keep him at bay. He shouted for a while, before dousing our fire with a grand splash of water he called out of the air. Our wood was soaked and Torne started to shout back. They were going to get into a fight, so I told the water apprentice to go away and I told Torne that I'd just light the fire again. The apprentice laughed at me and said that it was impossible. It took nearly no effort for me to get it started at all. He and Torne both gaped at me, and before I knew what was happening, the apprentice was dragging me back to his master, despite my loud protests, muttering the whole while about how it was a crime that a fire user be allowed to live in poverty. Torne followed us with the intention of helping me. I don't think he ever would have admitted that he cared about what was going to happen to me, but he did. After spending more than a year together, we developed a sort of demented brother/sister affection for each other, even if we did think that we hated each other. The apprentice told his master what happened with the fire, and the master said that I should go with them to the Nymph Shrine. The Shrine was essentially the headquarters of all the elemental monasteries all over the planet. They were sailing there from the port. It was on a volcanic island exactly in between the two islands, Gova in the south and Hadrian in the north. Hadrian is the Island which the Fortress sits on the southmost point of. I was totally awestruck and still didn't quite get why they wanted me to go, but I shouted at Torne to come out anyways, which he did. Apparently both master and apprentice were startled by his presence, but I ignored that and told them that I couldn't go because me and Torne needed each other to survive and one without the other meant going to bed hungry at night. The master nodded and gave Torne an amount of money that neither of us had seen in our lived before and told him to find another partner in crime, but that the money was to help him survive until he did so. So I was going with the water users and Torne was rich among thieves. Things work out sometimes I guess.

I arrived at the Shrine and was tested for my magic, which I apparently had an abundance of. I was to stay at the Shrine for eight years, until I was finished my training, but that it might take longer, which it often did. My teachers were a forty-something year old man named Tyke and his wife Arda. I spent six months with them teaching me, and I began to think that these were just like grade 1 teachers or something, because by the end of the first six months they'd run out of things to teach me. One morning, I was on my way to lessons and I heard Tyke and Arda talking to one of the grand masters. They were saying that I was too strong and that it was dangerous. They said that I had mastered things in a matter of days that it should take months to be able to perform satisfactorily. The grand master didn't seem worried though. He said that maybe I'd one day end up becoming a grand master myself and then left it at that.

Six months later, the Slave War broke out. Hadrian Island condoned slavery and Gova abhorred it. The war broke out with the accusations that slave traders from Hadrian were kidnapping citizens of Gova, most of them orphans. I was furious at the news and asked if I could join Gova's war effort. The element users had always been and will always remain neutral in disputes among countries, and so I wasn't allowed to go. It didn't matter much to me, since a few days later I was to finish my training and be named a master. I waited those days and immediately after the ceremony, I announced that I was leaving the Shrine and by that night I was on a boat on my way back to the same port city that I had come from. I arrived there and everything looked exactly as I remembered it, though a bit smaller, but that's what happens when you grow a good six inches while you're gone. I tried to join with Gova's army, but I was rejected because I was only thirteen and I was female. As I was leaving, a woman that I had seen a few times before at the Shrine walked in and asked to join. She was refused, as she was apparently too old, though from what I could see she still must have been under forty, and she was female. I stayed long enough to see what they said to her and then walked out, muttering curses against the sexist pigs. She came out behind me and started laughing, asking me why I hadn't been taught a proper apprentice's manners. I told her that it was because I'd never been an apprentice. We talked together for a while; I told her about my short experience at the Shrine and my uncommonly fast training. She told me about her time at the healer's monasteries, traveling all over the world. The two of use became fast friends, and she was like some kindly aunt I'd never met before.

It can't have been two months after that when the healer, Jade, and I met Lodi. I was down by the docks and he saw me complaining loudly about how it was so unfair that the army wouldn't let women fight. He approached me and said that he was the captain of the mercenary ship that routinely raided the slavers' ships. He was searching for a lookout, and said that an old saying around sailors said that those with green eyes had the sharpest sight, and that he would like to bring me aboard. It would give me a stab at the slavers and I wouldn't have to worry about the strict rules of the army. I agreed on the condition that Jade could come too. He didn't have any problem with it, seeing as how she was a healer and I think he rather felt love at first sight for her. Apparently the feeling was mutual, because they were married a year later. Anyways, Lodi had a patchwork crew of 'miscreants', as he called them, and they sailed after slave ships, saved the slaves and took whatever valuables they happened to find on board. The Slave War wasn't going anywhere, as the two armies were evenly matched and the slavers where bringing in as many slaves as the mercenary ships were saving.

I stayed with Lodi and Jade for a long time, sailing the world's two oceans, which were separated by a ring of volcanoes, on one of which rested the Nymph Shrine, called the Crown of the World. Members of the crew came and went, but with Lodi being the captain, Jade being the ship's sole healer and Lodi's wife, and me with my abilities in fire, which made sinking ships a snap, the three of us always stayed together. I made a good lookout, so I was sitting in the crow's nest early one morning, I was 15 at the time, when I saw a line on the horizon. I'll never forget it, as I don't think I've ever seen anything so strange in my life before. A black line had formed on the horizon, running in both directions, and wavering. The only reason I saw it was because of it's sharp contrast against the rising sun. I tried to figure out what it was, looking through my telescope at it. At that distance, even with my 'scope it only looked like a funny bunch of dots. It never even crossed my mind that the dots could have been ships, as I'd never seen that many ships in my life before. As it happened, that's what they were. I told Lodi and we booted it out of there as fast as the ship could possibly take us. No one wanted to deal with the hundreds upon hundreds of ships coming over the horizon. It was Dax. Now that I think about it, Ansem probably sent him to over run the world with Heartless and drag me back to Hollow Bastion to 'daddy dearest'.

Dax took over the entirety of Dawn's Oceans in a matter of months. He allied himself with Hadrian and won them the Slave War before invading Gova itself and sweeping what was left of the Govan army completely out of existence. Lodi's ship was taken, though it took three of Dax's ships to do it. The three of us barely managed to escape and decided we'd start a resistance against Lord Dax, as he was called now. For a while, we lived off of my skills as a thief, and made some 'friends' who'd help our cause. We were in the marketplace, the very same market that I'd lived in when I was younger, and a slaver was trying to take a little orphan. The owner of the store was helping him; apparently the orphan had stolen something. Before I got the chance to do anything to help, someone, an older orphan from the looks of him, else appeared out of the crowd that was forming and started an argument with the slaver and store owner. Then, he tried to make his escape, but was blocked by a few of the slaver's crew, who were standing in the crowd. I played my own part then, setting fire to a few choice pieces of clothing and giving the orphan and his defender an escape route. Once we were safely away, Lodi offered to let the older orphan join up with our fledgling resistance. He refused, saying that there was only one person who was good enough to run with him, and that she was gone. Jade made a comment about it being romantic and he laughed, saying that he and this girl hated each other. That was when I realized that the older orphan was Torne, though he said he was going by Ace these days. Apparently me being a part of the resistance made him change his mind, and he agreed to join us. We argued just like we used to, and I think that Lodi and Jade would have kicked one of us out of the group had it not been for the fact that we could take on any enemy together. Shortly after, we made our first attack on one of Dax's strongholds on Gova's coast. It went over well, but we were hunted for months afterwards, until news reached us that Dax had kidnapped a group of Earth Users and killed them all when they refused to join his cause. A pair of apprenticed Earth Users told us this; they had managed to escape the kidnapping because they'd been separated from the group when it happened. The pair, twins two years older than me named Soren and Avani, decided that they'd join us. They showed us to a mountain that was a part of the Crown of the World, with the village at its base being where they grew up. The caves in the mountain's base gave us a good place to stay and hide and plan. The twins could use their power to close the opening to the cave and join some of the other caves together, while I used my powers to light the caves. We named it the Rebel City. From thereafter, anyone who was in trouble for questioning Dax's right to rule, or who wanted to join our resistance, could stay there. It was easy for Soren and Avani to shape the inside of the mountain as they saw fit, and soon we had a fully shaped fortress of our own. As more and more people joined, we found ourselves accumulating furniture built by the different craftsmen, clothes from seamstresses, weapons from blacksmiths, dishes from potters, and food from chefs. Within the year we had a fully functioning city inside the mountain, and no one but those who were deemed trustworthy even knew it was there. Of course, rumors began to float around about an underground city of rebels, but that didn't put us in any danger because no one knew where it was, outside of the people actually living there.

At the age of about 16 and a half, I heard news about a large band of orphan thieves who had joined together and were demanding that something be done to help street kids so that they wouldn't have to steal. Lodi, Jade, Ace, Soren, Avani and I went to investigate it, and soon found out that it was an elaborate ploy to kidnap me. How did we find out that's what they were up to? Well, they kidnapped me. And then proceeded to gloat about how brilliant their plan was. Dax had set it up so that he could have his sacrifice. He didn't tell me what it was all about back then, he just kept me in the Fortress and told me that I was being executed for crimes against the government. I thought they'd figured out that I was a rebel, but I was wrong. He knew I was his sister, he just chose not to tell me so. I spent a just less than a year there before Dax tried to have me hung, apparently not yet knowing that his sacrifice had to be willing in order for the plan to work. I managed to escape, though to this day I still can't figure out how. They tried to use a platform to hang me from on the same tower they tried to burn me at the stake on. I had my hands tied behind me, so when I escaped the noose, I kicked Dax off the edge of the tower. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure why Dax is still alive, since no one should have survived such a fall. I think maybe he may have used his power with water. Dax has a talent with water the same way I do with fire. The vast majority of the time, both (or all) siblings inherit elemental powers, and Dax and I were no exception. I'd seen him use his power with water before, so I knew that water was his element. Anyways, I headed down and out of the tower, meeting a couple of guards on the way, much to my dismay, which meant I had to get rid of them without the use of my hands. About halfway down the tower, I burnt the ropes binding my wrists, but the entire ordeal had weakened me enough already that any use of magic was a bad idea. Once I was out of the tower, I encountered a huge group of guards and really didn't have much choice other than the burn them to a crisp. I'd have never survived the attack otherwise, but it left me dizzy and without any magic left in me whatsoever. I managed to reach the cliff where I found myself caught between more of Dax's soldiers and the cliff's edge. I would have used fire as my escape, since any magic user can transport themselves amazing distances using their element, but I had no power left in me to call on the fire. Dax appeared a moment later and began to shout orders at his soldiers and foul things at me. I jumped off the cliff, hoping that maybe I was one of those rare cases where a magic user could transport themselves to another place using their sibling's magic. It has happened before, but it's a rare thing, and even if you can do it, you have no control over where you end up, because it isn't your element. It didn't matter much to me where I ended up, as long as I wasn't there anymore. I hit the water and felt it changing slowly, though because I was so weak already I felt my memories slipping away from me as I fell. That's when I ended up on the Destiny Islands.

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Wooooow that's actually a lot of writing! Mkay well make sure to review everybody! Oh, and just in case you were confused, this is from Skye's POV. Okay? Cool!