Chapter Text
Fire.
I stared at the burning house in a daze. People were screaming around me but it was all muffled. I looked down at my hands, My mind was all fuzzy. I could barely remember what happened. Anger, fire, coming from my hands, but there was no evidence not even a slight burn remained on my fingertips. Someone grabbed me by the shoulders. My Father. “What happened? What did you do!” Nothing came out of my mouth, I just looked back up at the burning house.
That fire was the last thing I saw before my vision went dark.
Ok let’s back up a sec, hi I’m Alice, and I’m gonna explain how I got myself into this mess. So when I was two my Mother decided to go bye bye and couldn’t take me with her because of “reasons.” Ever since then my Father has hated my guts for y'know existing and breathing. Growing up no one in the house acted like I existed. My Father remarried and had new kids. They didn’t particularly care for me either and also acted like I didn’t exist. When I went to school no one tried to befriend me due to a stupid rumor that started in 5th grade. I ended up zoning out in my classroom and I ended up staring at some kids face on accident. As a result of being a ginger said child thought I was stealing his soul from staring at him for so long.
Either the kid watched too many youtube videos or he had questionable parents. Luckily for me though teachers aren’t retarded so usually if I had a chill teacher I would befriend them and spend my lunches in their class. Anyways, considering that I still had a crappy home life, It didn’t help much. Which brings me back to the present day of when I accidentally burnt my house down.
The next thing I knew, my Father was down with me and decided to kick me out and drop me off to a camp for apparently kids with “Issues.” I think the place is better suited for him than me. The place was in the middle of a forest. It was bright green with flowers blooming everywhere. However it didn’t look like a camp or a place you’d drop off kids with behavior problems. Instead of wooden cabins, like at camp half blood in percy jackson, there were mini houses. Dorms apparently, which I needed to share with one other person.
The only thing I had with me was one bag with some of my stuff, clothes mainly, the ones that weren’t burned in the fire.
I walked into the dorm. It was pretty normal, not too dark or too bright, a girl walked out of one of the rooms. The first thing I noticed was the burn marks that covered her whole body. She had curly dirty blonde hair and green eyes, she was also wearing a cropped white t-shirt and denim shorts. She noticed me standing in front of the door with a hint of surprise in her eyes. “Oh, you must be the new girl I'm sharing my dorm with.” She stated. “I’m Myra, nice to meet you.” She had a small smile, there was definitely a very relaxed demeanor about her. “I’m Alice, it’s nice to meet you too.” “Alice? Like Alice in Wonderland?” “Yup.” “That’s a nice name.” Myra leaned against the wall with one of her brows raised. “So, how did you end up here?”
“I burnt my house down.” I replied. “You?” Her mouth curved into a smile. “I was struck by lightning during a storm, when I survived with burns all over my Mom decided that it was extremely abnormal, which it was, but she thought I was too dangerous to keep around so she sent me here.” She seemed pretty happy despite literally being abandoned by her Mom. I let out a quiet laugh. “Dang, that’s rough dude.” She let out a heavy sigh and pushed herself off the wall. “Eh, you get used to it after a couple years, then you feel nothing about it. It’s just life.” She started walking towards me, hands clasped behind her. “Anyways, I’m guessing you have no idea where anything is? I can show you around. It's not that big so you shouldn’t worry about getting lost.” I straightened my posture, right I have zero clue where anything is, or how stuff works around here.
“Yea, that’d be great thanks.” I responded softly.
And so we departed the dorm. “This place doesn’t have much of a schedule, you pretty much do whatever. The only thing that’s scheduled are meal times.” Myra pointed to the area with a bunch of benches under the trees. “We meet over there at 9:00am for breakfast, then at 1:00pm for lunch, and finally 6:00pm for dinner.” She turned around facing me while walking backwards. “It’s actually quite nice here despite it being summer, It’s almost never hot. It does get quite cold at night though, so I would make sure you have a decent amount of blankets.”
A little farther past the benches we entered a new building slightly bigger than the dorms, probably the size of a first story house. As we entered there were a bunch of kids with different weapons. Bows, guns, and swords, ok this is the type of place you send a kid with pent up anger. Myra glanced at me with slight amusement. “This is the armory, where we typically spend most of our time usually if you’re a weaponry type person. However if you’re like one of us who’s gifted then you practice in different areas.” I squinted at her. “Gifted?” Myra sighed and turned to look at me. “It might not seem like a gift at first, but the more you use it and control it, you’ll come to realise it’s not as harmful as you think.” She grinned. “Comon, theres someone I want you to meet.”
We exited the building and went over to the fields right behind it. Over there were two guys, doing what obnoxious and retarded men usually do best, bicker and beat each other up. One of them had semi short black hair with fluffy bangs that covered most of his forehead and blood red eyes. He had a huge grin on his face while he dodged his friend's attacks. The other guy had brown hair but his hair had a side part so his bangs were swept to the side he also had chocolate brown eyes. They gave an extremely big cat and dog type friendship vibe.
We continued walking over to them when Myra shouted. “Hey morons!” Both of them halted what they were doing and slowly turned to look at us. Myra gave them a constricting smile, and I saw a muscle in her jaw clench. “What were you arguing about now?” Brown hair immediately responded, pointing at black hair. “He stole my food again! Without asking!” “We need to send him back to the depths of hell of which he came!” Myra then proceeded to boop his nose. “I ain’t that deep, take a chill pill.” I gave her an offended look. “I disagree. I would say that taking food is a massive offence.” Brown hair grinned “Thank you!” Then he stared at me. “Wait, who’s ginger?” He asked with a puzzled expression. Myra gasped. “Oh right! Introductions!” Myra turned to me and pointed at the two confused guys. “This is Rhovan and Zephyr.” “Guys, this is Alice, she's my new roommate.”
Rhovan’s eyes met mine. I thought it wouldn’t feel awkward or intense but it was actually pretty calming. It was like all the stress I had before just vanished, he stared at me for a while before his mouth curved upwards into a grin. “Oh really? We don’t get new people pretty often.” Zephyr crossed his arms and smiled softly. “It’s a good thing you have Myra as your roommate. A lot of the other kids here would’ve definitely freaked you out.” I sweatdropped. “Yea, I’m getting that vibe.”
“It’s getting pretty late so we should probably head over for dinner.” Myra stated. As we started heading over to the benches Rhovan jogged up to me and slung his arm over my shoulder. “Welcome to hell ginger, you’ll love it here.”