• A small girl lay tightly curled in the corner. Shivers raked her body and her wide frightened eyes stared out into the impenetrable darkness. Above, she could hear the terrible screams of her family being slaughtered, and she could smell smoke when the men started to burn her home. The screams echoed in her small underground hideout seeming to grow louder and louder, ringing until she felt her ears would burst. She shook more and more violently, desperately hoping they wouldn’t find and open the little door, open it and find her. She knew that was why they had come; she had known this for about five years…ever since she was old enough to understand, almost as long as she’d been alive. Those men who were killing her loved ones had come for her. Come to take her away. Only, she didn’t know why…

    Suddenly, as the screaming died out, she heard the dull thud of footsteps and gruff voices coming closer and closer to her door. Beads of sweat appeared at her forehead as she heard what the men were saying.

    “Hey, over here! I think I found her! Help me lift this door.”

    She almost stopped breathing in a vain effort to mislead the men. She could remember her mother warning her to never go with them. She had said they would take her to a horrible place and lock her away. But mother had never said why. Still, she knew she mustn’t go with them; she had to try to get away. Still shaking with fear and now sorrow, the girl turned and tensed, ready to run as soon as the door was opened.

    And just moments later it did. Slowly, ever so slowly, the men lifted away the door and shone a flashlight into the darkness. But she didn’t wait for it to hit her. As soon as she saw the thin beam of light, she squeezed her eyes shut and ran. She burst out of the doorway, stunning the four men standing there, and then reopened her eyes. What she saw froze her.

    Her home had been completely destroyed. Everything was black. The walls were merely soot covered twigs and the furniture was no longer namable. A small, bright flame still burned and there was soot in the air. And in the center of it, all she could see was red, the red of fresh blood. Slowly, eyes wide in shock and horror, and her wispy brown hair blown by the wind, she made her way towards the blood, towards her family. Every few steps she stumbled and fell, her foot having caught on a bit of a table or a stone or even just air, but, after what felt like eternity, she had reached her parents.

    Still scared beyond words, the girl fell to her knees besides them and grabbed her mother’s hand and touched her father’s face. Tears rolled down her young, dirty cheeks as she began to sob in pain. Then, faintly, she heard someone speak. They mumbled something softly, ever so softly, she wasn’t even sure she heard it. Her mother’s hand moved then, just a slight jerk, but this time she knew she felt it this time.

    “Mother?” She whispered.

    “D..est..iny…” her mother choked out, “…run…away…stay…safe…and take…this…”

    Destiny glanced at her mother’s other hand. In it she held a silver necklace with a swirling green teardrop pendent. She grabbed it and looked back at her mother, but her eyes were already closing. Her hand fell and she was no more. The girl’s emerald green eyes filled with tears once again as she turned to her father, but he was already gone. Blood still flowing from all the places they had been hit by the men had taken them.

    …The men.

    Destiny stopped crying, and her eyes went hard and cold. She turned to face the four murderers behind her, still standing stunned at the door. All the rage and fear and loss she felt slammed against the inside of her small frame, threatening to tear her apart. It all burst out of her in an instant, sending a beam a blinding white light shooting towards the men. But Destiny never saw it hit, for the moment it left her, she collapsed and slipped into unconsciousness…