Scarlett Ember's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Scarlett Ember bought the house before she owned a single friend to fill it. It stood alone at the edge of the colony, big and warm, with a wide porch and a front door painted red. She had a name for the place already: a haven for people like her, red-haired and hot-tempered, judged dangerous on Elosia before they ever spoke. She had the door. She had the rooms. She had no one to walk through them. She kept the porch swept and a lamp lit every night. Three nights running, no one came. On Elosia, a temper was treated like a sickness. Outcasts learned to hide, to shrink, to vanish into the crowd. Scarlett stood straight in the doorway and could not find a single one of them. The fourth night, she heard shouting near the market. A crowd had gathered around a spilled cart. At the center stood a woman with a bright, angry face, gripping a long sword by its wrapped handle. The blade was old and finely made, gold at the guard, a blue stone set in the cross. "Touch it again," the woman said, "and you lose the hand." The crowd called her mad. They called her dangerous. Scarlett knew those words. They had used them on her. She pushed through. "The cart owner short-changed her," a boy whispered. Scarlett looked. It was true. The woman had drawn steel over a fair debt, and the crowd had decided her temper was the crime. "She's right," Scarlett said loudly. "Pay her what you owe." The merchant flushed and counted out the coins. The crowd, robbed of its target, drifted off muttering. The woman lowered the sword and stared at Scarlett. "Nobody speaks for me," she said. Her grip did not loosen. "I'm not asking to," Scarlett said. "I'm asking you to come with me." She pointed toward the house at the colony's edge, its lamp still burning. "There's a door there that stays open for people they call dangerous. I built it. You'd be the first through it." The woman said nothing for a long moment. Then a small creature crept from behind the cart. It was covered in soft cream fur, with huge dark eyes and a long, curling tail. It climbed the woman's boot and clung to her leg. "He follows me," the woman said. "He's the only one who does." "Bring him," Scarlett said. They walked together to the red door. The woman sheathed the blade and stepped inside. The furred creature darted in after her and curled up by the hearth. For the first time, Scarlett's haven held someone besides herself. The woman set the sword against the wall and looked around at the empty rooms. "One of us isn't a haven," she said. "It's two people in a big cold house." Scarlett nodded. She had found her first ally. Now she needed to fill the rest of the rooms.