Fire, G (#55)

[Shhasow]

Title: Fire
Rating: G
Prompt #55: Remembrance
Summary: What started it all.

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It is in nights like these, worn, aching, tired, lonely, that Alanna lets her mind drift.

She normally doesn’t let herself; the past is past, what is done cannot be undone. Dwelling on what-ifs has lead better women than she to the brink of madness.

Yet shivering in her tent, hearing the low voices of the men she leads and the occasional distant howl of a wolf, she allows herself to remember and to dream.

Alanna can’t say that she regrets her life, yet her mind travels back to her childhood with Thom, her stressful secretive training at the palace, and the years of answering challenges and piecing together a shattered country, and she is filled with weariness.

The world has changed. She has changed it, but nothing is free.

Memories flicker sluggishly, as if they are as worn as she, until they give way to the one image that propelled her along a path.

A black city beckoning from inside a flame.

As Alanna has learned, fire is not a gentle master.

[snowkab]

I like it. You've done better with the prompt than I probably ever will.

Sometimes I forget that that's where she first saw the city, in the fire.

[Rosie]

Very powerful, choosing to go back to that moment! Also like the conscious realisation that she has changed the world, and then the line "nothing is free".

[Muse]

Oooh Nat, I love it!

The sense that the world as it is in her present is very different than how it was is interesting. I think its very true, from what we've seen, and her realization of this is weighty.

I wonder if she regrets anything, looking back, or if she would change somethings she's done?...that's the sense that this gives me, anyway

[wordy]

This is stunning! Very well-crafted, and a realistic portrait of Alanna.

[Shhasow]

Thank you everyone! I must give Snow credit for giving me the prompt 'Fire is not a gentle master.' I am glad you all enjoyed it.