As the flames grew, she made up her mind. She raced to her brother’s room, flinging the door open. “Dori, wake up!” she shouted, making her brother’s eyes fly open.

“Maemae? What’s going on?” he asked, rubbing his tired eyes. 

Mae ran to his bed, scooping him up on her back. 

“Wait! We can’t leave LuLu!” he exclaimed, sliding off of her and grabbing his stuffed cat.

“We don’t have time!” Mae exclaimed, picking him back up. Thankfully, he didn’t drop his cat. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to get him to leave without it. At this point, smoke had started to trail in through the doorway. 

Mae ran down the hall as fast as she could with her brother, flinging the front door open and rushing outside. She turned back to the house. From the outside, you could just start to see the flames. 

“Where are you going?” Dorian asked, worry seeping into his voice as he watched the light in the windows flicker where there wasn’t supposed to be light. 

Mae walked towards the house. “I have to get them out,” she said, dashing back through the doorway, shocked by how much the flames had grown. 

She sprinted up the stairwell, moving quickly on her long legs. Once she reached the top, she reeled back. The hallway was filled with flame. She couldn’t get to her parents’ rooms. 

“Mother! Da!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “You have to get out! Open your window!” 

She thought she heard a response, but the flames were creeping towards her, both from the hallway and from the bottom of the stairs. She coughed, her eyes watering from the smoke. After she heard the sound of her parents in their room, she dashed up the last flight of stairs, emerging on the roof where she took great gulps of the fresh air. 

Down on the ground, she could just make out her brother standing on the dark lawn.

“Maemae, why are you on the roof?” she could barely hear him shout over the roar of the flames beneath her. 

She tried to slow her racing heart, but she was glad knowing that she had warned her parents. They could get out through their window. Now all she needed to do was jump down from the roof. Her dad had taught her how to land if she was falling, and she still remembered his lesson. 

“I’ll be right down,” she shouted back at her brother. She stood at the edge of the roof, trying to still her trembling legs. Before she could think twice about it, she jumped. For most of the fall, she was confident that she would be okay. But then she made a mistake. She glanced at her brother to make sure he was okay, before landing hard on the ground, directly on her right leg. She crumpled to the dirt, feeling nausea creep up her throat. Her leg was bent all wrong, pain shooting up whenever she tried to move. 

She cried out, cradling her twisted leg. Dorian ran towards her, his cat dangling from his hand. 

“What happened to your leg?” he exclaimed, tears building up in his eyes. 

Before she could respond, the house erupted into flames, a bright, shining light in the darkness. Her breath caught in her throat. 

“Dori? Have you seen Ma and Da?” she asked, her voice quivering. 

“I thought they were with you,” he said, his hands shaking. LuLu dropped to the ground. “Da? Da! Da, where are you?” he shouted, breathing heavily. He started to run towards the house, but Mae got a hold of his leg. 

“You can’t go in there,” she said, a tear slipping out of her eye. “You’ll get trapped. Please don’t go in there.”

He sank to the ground, clutching his stuffed animal in his arms and sobbing. Mae wrapped an arm around him, her breaths coming in heaving gasps as the house burned in front of them. They sat there all night, until the fire had died down to a smolder. 

All too late, a group of Flame mages showed up in the small clearing, eventually coming upon Mae and her brother, still in each other’s arms. 

“Hey, kids, what happened here?” one of them asked, squatting down next to them. 

“The house burned down,” Mae said, her tears spent and her voice devoid of emotion. “My parents were inside.”

The Flame mage stood awkwardly for a moment, unsure of how to comfort two kids who just lost their parents. After a moment, his eyes landed on Mae’s broken leg. 

“Oh, my goodness,” he exclaimed. “We’d better get that fixed up for you.”

Mae stood, leaning on her other leg and wincing in pain. She tugged up her brother, who was still sniffling and clutching his cat close to his chest. 

As they started to walk away, Mae looked back at the house. _Don’t let it use you. _A tear slipped out of her eye as she stared at the smoldering ruins. “Twice as hard, Mae,” she muttered to herself, turning away. “Don’t let her be right. Twice as hard.”

__

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the rest of that story,” Mae said, gesturing towards her leg. “That idiot mage didn’t set the bone right and it never really healed. I’ve learned to live with it, though. Got a nice cane made by a Maker mage, started to use it to my advantage. Guess it didn’t work well enough,” she said bitterly, thinking back to that meeting in her headmaster’s office. 

Zein looked at her with watering eyes. “I… I’m so sorry,” he said sadly. 

“It was a long time ago,” Mae said, looking out the window.

They sat in silence for a moment. 

“So, where _did _you get that little scar from?” Zein asked.

Mae laughed. “That, kid, is from an oyster shucking knife from Seya that my Da gave me when he showed up on our doorstep with baby Dorian,” she said with a fond smile. “I was playing with it and it cut my leg. Da said it would go away,” she said, a tear building up in her eye. She blinked it away. “Anyway, story time is done. I’d better go get Dorian and LuLu to bed,” she said, standing up and limping down the hall. 

After getting her brother to go to sleep, she sat down on the grass outside the little house, feeling the anger, regret, and grief from that night all over again. But this time, there was just a little bit of resentment. 

She looked up at the stars. “You were right,” she said to no one in particular. “You were right.” She stared at the sky, a tear slipping down her cheek. “Are you happy now, Ma? You were right all along. I hope you’re happy.”