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Stop, drop, and roll didn’t register past her agony. No logical thought was able to surface other than her panic and pain. She tried to put out the flames by patting her body erratically, all the while staring at them on her arm, unable to think abouthowto dothat.

In that moment, she’d known nothing but her skin bubbling and boiling. The smell of oil, skin, hair, and clothing burning. All she’d heard was crackling, punctuated by her own cries.

“I didn’t even have time to register that I’d broken my arm when all I felt was fiery agony,” she whispered, her voice quivering.

She needed to finish her story; she’d told it before. She could do this.

Emerie sucked in a large, cooling breath.

“I didn’t even know until later that my home was in flames and that my parents were trapped inside.” She lowered her voice until it was barely comprehensible, as she said, “It wasn’t until later that I was told what saved the worst of my face from being melted away was Gideon’s blood and insides landing on my head.”

Emerie dug her nails into her shirt when her heart ached beyond recognition. She wanted to pull it out, to tell it to stop hurting. She wished her breaths hadn’t turned so shallow and short, or that her skin hadn’t suddenly flared with heat everywhere she was scarred from that night.

With just a small amount of fuel, she feared she’d combust and have to relive those burns.

“In one night, my whole family, my identity, my life, was taken from me. Because of a Demon, because of my own stupidity. I spent months in an infirmary with burns on twenty-five percent of my body. Those first weeks... I remember nothing. Then, when I finally came to, I had to learn that everyone I cared about in this entire world, people I didn’t think I could live without, were gone, and that it was all my fault. It bothers me every day that the last thing I said to Gideon was an insult.”

Learning that half of the left side of her face and neck had third-degree burns had been horrifying to see when she’d first looked in the mirror. She also had them from her thigh all the way to her chest, with the worst being on her shoulder and biceps.

They had been even harder to accept.

She’d lost strength in her arm, and she still sometimes struggled to move it without her scars pulling. They were tight, sunken, and some days itchy if she didn’t air them.

Emerie had to learn to live with all this, plus the insecurity it brought, and didn’t have the people she needed the most there to soothe her through it.

Gideon was gone, and his green eyes would never again shine at her the way they used to, full of brotherly love. She’d never see his light, near-caramel-coloured hair play in the wind, or feel his arms wrap around her, bringing her in for a tight hug.

The world would never hear him mangle a guitar or sing while pissed drunk, tone-deaf and completely unaware of it.

He would have been there for her every single day had he been alive. He would have petted her uninjured hand, spoon fed her soup, and tried everything in his might to make her laugh at his stupid puns and jokes.

And her parents... although they were getting old, they’d been robbed of the last few years of their lives together. They would have done everything in their power to make her comfortable, and never would have tried to make her feel bad for doing this to herself.

These three people would have unconditionally loved her, accepted her, and still thought she was beautiful.

Instead, the world had turned cold, lonely, and unbearable. It had grown dark, even on the brightest of days.

It had become empty.

When she opened her eyes to look at the forest, her expression cold and stark, tears immediately fell. Everything went murky, only clearing for a split second when she blinked, before more tears clouded her vision.

“I pushed away everyone. My boyfriend eventually stopped visiting me in the hospital, saying it was too difficult to look at me.” Gosh, that had set into motion the insecurities that only worsened over the years. “Some of my friends stuck around until I was released, but most didn’t. Maybe it was because they couldn’t help my pain and they couldn’t handle not being able to out of shame, or maybe it was because I was really... volatile. No one had the answer to fixing me or my pain, so I took it out on them. One friend let me stay with her because I had no home, but once I was capable on my own, she eventually asked me to leave because I was upsetting her children.”

Unable to handle the way her swollen lips stung with salty tears on them, she wiped them with the back of her hand. That’s what reminded her to wipe the rest of her face, knowing it was blotchy and tear-stained. Her knees knocked inwards when she had to remove snot too.

Emerie was a gross, ugly crier, made more noticeable due to her skin being delicate and light.

“I lost a bunch of weight though, since I was pretty chubby before all this, so I guess that’s a good thing.”

With her eyes closed to avoid actually looking at Ingram, she gave him a false smile and a thumbs up. Her joke was in poor taste, and it just made her cry harder because she knew she was only doing it to cope with how she was feeling.

“Even though I’d just lost everything, I still didn’t want to die. It’s weird, but it made me more desperate to live. Maybe for the wrong reasons, but my memories and nightmares ate at me, and I thought if I found that Demon again, and killed it, it would let me forget. So, I joined the Demonslayer guild in the eastern sector, away from the sea and my hometown. I wanted them to help me stop being afraid, and if I knew how to fight, it would make me feel safer.”

There, she’d told her story.

Ingram’s silence allowed her the chance to collect herself.

Yet, it only made her linger on her history. All the bad that had happened.