Kyteline

The La-Stell family was wealthy and powerful, so the whispers only ever circulated behind their well protected backs. In her early school years, only child Kimber La-Stell would catch snippets of conversation that the other kids were afraid to say to her face. She became used to hearing words like strange and crazy paired with her name. She never understood what the words meant, but she could understand the feelings behind them whenever the other kids threw her weird looks, as if they were terrified of her. There were rumors about her, rumors about something that had happened at her birth, but her parents kept it very hush-hush whenever she was around.

She spent her days alone, with few smiles, fewer laughs and the fewest of friends. Her best friend was the falcon her parents gave to her at age five. She told that falcon everything, all of her secrets and everyone else's too. She named the falcon Calypso, meaning “she that conceals.”

Though her time in school may not have been the best, home was far worse. It was as if she were no better than the maids that tended to the massive La-Stell mansion. 'Do not speak until spoken to' was one of the many rules that was placed upon her, though she cared not and hardly ever heeded it. This stubbornness earned her a fair amount of punishments such as nights without dinner and in really bad cases, a week in the servants quarters in the attic.

During punishments like these, Kimber became friends with the servants. She found her stubbornness was sated when she was with them. She began misbehaving more often than not, just so that she could visit the attic and spend time learning to read and write from the older men and women servants. The curiosity that always fueled her shined in her eyes whenever one of the maids lent her a book to read, or a journal to write in.

By the time she was eight, she knew how to read books of stature and write pages upon pages in her journals filled with a vocabulary far beyond her years. Kids in school began to snicker at her whenever she sat alone and wrote in her journal. They could neither read nor write, and so they looked down upon her with a hundred more precepts of contempt than before. She ignored them as best she could.

Kimber always knew she was special but she was never sure quite why until she got bit older. It started happening just before her eleventh birthday, where her hands would get burning hot and whatever she touched would singe and turn black. She could feel some of the heat, but it never actually hurt her. She was careful when touching people, because the burning would come about at random moments. She could not control it, and whenever she was emotional, it seemed to occur more often.

Kimber kept it a secret, worried that her parents would get angry and think that she was making it up, and that the servants would have to tell her parents. It became a paradox, where she could only wait and see what would happen. The longer she waited, the stronger the burning got until once in a while, she could call forth an actual flame into her palm. It scared her, at the same time as being strangely captivating. Kimber always felt more agile, like her syrupy blood was thinned whenever the burning occurred.

Sometimes she wondered if it was magic that gave her that watered down feeling. She would scorn herself for thinking those thoughts, because she knew as well as everyone else did that magic was forbidden in her dear city of Kyteline. There were always the rumors of the City of Beggars in the old network of tunnels beneath Kyteline, and sometimes Kimber dreamt of running away to see if the rumors were true. It was said that magic users like her were free to practice their magic whenever and wherever they wanted down there. Kimber used to draw pictures of the City of Beggars and how she imagined its people looked like. Her parents had a certain distaste for that obsession of hers, and after it had gotten too much for them, they sent her away to the attic. They thought they were punishing her and ruining her imagination when in reality, they were letting it run wild.

Kimber loved her gift because she knew it made her special. In some part of her heart, she understood that it made her powerful as well, but that didn't matter to her. All she wanted was to be special enough for her parents to love her, and to have friends besides a falcon and some servants.