Burnt to the Ground

Zinnia hadn’t considered that she might freeze right here. She had recited that age-old adage over and over. Just act like you belong there. Just act like you belong there. Just act like you belong there. If she gave nobody any reason to believe she wasn’t supposed to be entering the Arcane Research Institute of Discidia, nobody would stop her. Nobody could stop her. Least of all herself.

Yet, here she was. Giving everyone who walked by plenty of reason to suspect her as she stood and gawked at the building she’d seen a million times and grown to despise, her hand up in front of her. She held her fingers just an inch away from snapping fire into existence. It would be so easy to just snap her fingers, to light the whole thing up, to just walk away. She could be the one to say “No, you can’t be a mage,” for once. But she was frozen in place instead. Why?

She frowned, rage building inside of her. It would be so easy! She knew the spell, all she needed to do was cast it and walk away, letting the building burn. She was stronger than this stupid… whatever she was feeling.

Her mother deserved it, she reminded herself. She had pushed against Zinnia’s dreams since she was born. She was a horrible woman. It was time for her to pay the consequences she had managed to avoid for all of these years.

---

Zinnia was six years old. She sat on a wooden stool inside the highest floor of her mother’s stone tower, swinging her legs back and forth. Her mother’s long, brown hair whipped around as she darted back and forth from bookshelf to desk, scrawling things down on parchment, and snapping her fingers over and over. A circle drawn in coal on the stone floor would light, briefly, into a spark of green flame, before dying out again. Her mother scrawled something else down on the parchment and tried again.

“Wow, Mommy, you’re really fast!” Zinnia squeaked out, smiling wide at her mother. “Can I be a mage like you?”

Her mother froze and looked at her. A tired, flat expression. “You’re going to grow up to be a good wife. Not a mage.”

Zinnia pouted and looked down at the coal circle on the floor, swinging her legs slower. “Oh, okay.”

Her mother snapped her fingers, and the circle ignited again.

---

Zinnia furrowed her brow. Her mother never cared about her desires. She cared about her stupid magic school, and now she cared about the Arcane Institute. But she never cared about Zinnia. She just wanted a daughter to sell off into marriage or some bullshit, nevermind how she herself had escaped from an arranged marriage. Fucking hypocrite.

---

Zinnia was ten. One of her mother’s failed potions coated her feet and legs, stinging just a little bit, making it difficult to run down the stone steps without slipping. She tried her best to direct her force straight downward with each step, rather than forward. Her legs shook as she stepped.

She turned to look behind her, hoping her mother wasn’t there, only to find that she was falling down the stairs now. She imagined her mother’s rage-filled eyes as she landed face-first on the corner of a stair, her face dragging down the rest of the way to plant itself on the floor of the tower basement. She felt an excruciating CRACK! Not to mention, there was ringing in her ears. 

Dizzy and weeping, she shambled up and ducked underneath the stairs, into the shadows, holding her hands to her head as she waited to hear her mother’s pounding footsteps.

Her head was bleeding profusely, and she could barely sit up, even with her back against the stone wall. Her head was pounding, she couldn’t think straight or hear anything other than the image of her mother’s vague, looming shadow. A fuzzy gray wall closed in around her vision. She knew she shouldn’t let herself fall asleep, but she just felt so heavy…

She didn’t even notice her father until he was sitting right next to her, holding her gently, wiping off the blood with a rag. He said something to her, but she couldn’t tell what it was. She knew it was something nice though. Her eyes started to drift shut, but her father gently shook her at the shoulders.

“No, Zinnia… can’t… let… sleep…” was what she made out. She filled in the gaps herself, nodding. A sharp pain shot through her, a flash of lightning, and her hand shot up to hold her head. Her father wrapped his arms around her.

She heard a distant thudding, not really thinking too much about what it might be until her mother was suddenly dragging her out from under the stairs by her feet, and her father was trying to pull her away. Her father’s grip slipped away, and he sat there, shaking under the stairs.

Zinnia remembered why she had fallen down the stairs when her mother started beating her and her father started sobbing as he watched. She preferred the pounding pain of her head.

---

She thought back to her father. He had tried to protect her, somewhat. He had tried to comfort her and to encourage her, behind his wife’s back. But he’d been a coward. A weak willed, scrawny coward. Her fist was shaking with rage. He was a man, he should have stood up against his wife and defended his daughter! He should have defended himself. But he let Zinnia’s mother walk all over both of them because he was too much of a coward to say or do anything other than offer pity to Zinnia, when he should have pitied himself.

---

Zinnia was twelve. She stood in the doorway of her bedroom, hands tucked behind her back, rocking back and forth on her feet. A smile was fixed on her face. The light of her room shone out from behind her to cast a plane of orange on the stone wall in the hallway. Her father stood in her shadow, face barely poking out in the dim light.

“It’s something I bought in the market today, that’s all,” Zinnia told her father, her voice soft and unwavering. Her father stared at her, equally as unwavering.

He tapped his chin, opening his mouth. “Last I recall, you had spent your entire allowance for the month on books. So I find it a bit odd that you’ve managed to buy an entirely new thing at the market with the remaining zero copper pieces you had left.”

Zinnia chuckled softly. “I finished one of the books and sold it.”

“You bought those books yesterday, Zin.”

She nodded. “That’s right. I got so invested in it, the world it created was so… cool. I couldn’t help but read the whole thing in one night. Didn’t you see I had my lamps lit all night?”

Her father tapped his chin for a moment. “I suppose you did. But that doesn’t excuse you from showing me what it was you bought.”

Zinnia pouted. “I’m twelve years old, can’t I have the slightest bit of privacy?”

Her father chuckled, a smirk on her face. “I understand the feeling. Tell you what. You show me what you… bought... and I promise I won’t tell your mother about it. Deal?” He stuck his hand forward, the dim orange light highlighting his fingers and wrist.

Zinnia looked at it apprehensively, holding one hand delicately in front of her chest as she held the other still behind her.

“Okay…” she choked out, cautiously taking the hand. Her father smiled warmly at her and shook. Zinnia closed her eyes and took a breath.

“Go on, then. Show me.”

Opening her eyes, she looked right into her father’s, barely lit by the lamps behind her, the soft, gentle greens barely showing. Slowly, she pulled a narrow, long wooden box, no longer than her arm, from behind her back. It was decorated with intricate carvings, darkened in the divets, and three metal latches that held it shut. On the front of the box, carved in small, golden letters, was the name ‘Aurum.’

Her father looked intently at the box, frowning. “Could you tell me why your friend’s name is on the front of this wand case?”

Zinnia frowned, looking at her feet. “I… bought it from her. At the market.”

Her father looked at her quizzically. “I wonder why Aurum would have sold you her wand. Doesn’t she need it for her magic lessons?” Zinnia shook her head.

“She… got a new one. And I just wanted to try it and see… if I could use it.”

Her father smiled at her warmly. He softly knelt in front of her, putting a hand on her shoulder, his voice no higher than a whisper. “Listen, Zinnia. I know how much you care about this. I promised I wouldn’t tell your mother, so I won’t, but I expect you to make the right choice. Do the right thing. Alright, sweetie?”

Zinnia pouted, sighing, and nodded. Her fingers were crossed behind her back.

He stood up at smiled. “Good. Now get some sleep.”

---

Zinnia was fifteen years old. Her mother sat on a leather sofa, holding a book, scouring through it with her finger, and Zinnia was standing before her. Her father sat in a chair across the room, investigating a model he had been working on.

“Please, Mom, I need to get a job! Taking care of chores isn’t enough for me anymore. I need something more fulfilling,” Zinnia pleaded. Her mother frowned at her.

“How many times have I told you, Zinnia? A good housewife doesn’t work. She stays at home and makes sure her husband can come home to a clean house, a ready dinner, and children taken care of.”

Zinnia frowned. “Is that why you don’t stay at home, then? I don’t want to be a housewife.”

Her mother looked up from the tome, a deadly scowl on her face. “Don’t talk back to me. I said no.”

Her father looked up from his model. “Why not? I think Zinnia would do well with a job. She could bring home a little extra money, too. I know times have been tight at the university, and-”

Her mother bolted up from the sofa, the book thunking on the floor. “Times have not been tight.” She stormed over to her husband, who was squirming to get out of his seat.

“No, honey, I-I just meant that having a little extra money for the family would be a good thing for all of us. Would get her out of the house more, too.”

Mother stood directly in front of him, as he fell out of his chair. “I said no. That means no. She’s not getting a job.” Her hand rose up in front of her. “And frankly, honey, I’m tired of you constantly trying to go against me. You’re a cowardly little contrarian, that’s all you are.”

Zinnia’s eyes widened as she saw her mother’s hand rise up. “Mom, what are you doing?!”

“You too! The only thing either of you cares about is saying the opposite of what I say, that’s all you care about. You just like to argue, argue, argue, and I’m fucking sick of it!”

“Honey, p-put your hand down, we can talk about this.”

“I’ve tried talking about it! You two don’t listen. Maybe this will get the message through at least one of your skulls.”

She snapped her fingers, and there was a flash of light. Burning, intense heat filled the room. Zinnia could feel her heart pounding in her chest as every hair on her body felt like it was falling off.

But it was over as quickly as it started. And there was a black, charred mass on the floor by the chair.

She wanted to scream at her mother. She wanted to curse and scream and hit her as hard as she could, calling her the evil, piece of shit bitch she was. But she was frozen, the words trembling on her lips.

Zinnia’s mother turned to her, an empty expression on her face.

“Pack light. We’re moving.”

---

Zinnia was shaking. She still felt like she was there, to this day. She repeated that moment in her head over and over again, the room flooded with light, that rock in the pit of her stomach, the burning sensation. The wind whipped at her skin, bringing her back into reality, looking at the Arcane Research Institute of Discidia.

She had witnessed that murder. One moment her father was fine, the next he was charcoal. She wanted to do that to this building, to show her mother how it felt to lose everything she cared about.

Her eyes softened.

She was seething with rage, but she felt soft. A stone sank inside her stomach, like she couldn’t swallow. She looked at the building, tracing the edges of it with her eyes, as a soft layer of tears started to form in them.

Her mother wasn’t the only person in this building. There could be hundreds of mages in that building, and all of them could die if she did this. She felt heavy. Not drowsy or sleepy, but just… so…

She collapsed to the ground, sobbing.

If she burnt down this building, she was no better. She hated herself for coming all the way here to do what her mother had done to hundreds of innocent people. She didn’t deserve to be alive, but she felt a burning rage toward her mother for making her like this. She felt a seething hatred toward her father for being such a fucking coward, but she felt a complete and utter disdain for herself for almost destroying so many lives.

“God dammit,” she cursed, sobbing. Tears fell to the dirt, seeping into the ground, staining her face. She wanted to just crawl into ground and stay there forever.

Looking up at the building, she felt nothing but hate and confusion. This was someone’s fault. Her mother, father, or herself, one of the three. But she kept flipping through them in her mind, letting the hatred flow toward each of them only to move on to the next one and hate them even more.

She stood up, one foot planted firmly on the ground, wiping her tears away, scowling at the building. Her next foot on the ground, pushing herself up, fists clenched, her hair hanging in front of her face. She blew it to the side.

Facing the building for one last time, she was shaking.

“You’re a piece of shit, Mom. Fuck you.”

Then she turned and walked away, never turning back.