EVE-80: Cinder Whisp

Cinder Whisp is the younger sister of Firebranch Garden and the cousin of Dusk Lillies Garden. When the two siblings were younger, their mother passed away which led them to being taken in by the Queen and to live there. Having witnessed the death of her mother, Cinder Whisp found herself overwhelmed by many feelings she didn't know how to deal with, and often felt misunderstood, which made her turn to bullying others. She despised and often bullied Seraphina Stone because she was jealous of how smart and intelligent she was. 

 

Anytime Cinder was upset she would burst into flames, and sometimes her and her brother butt heads, but the two of them were always very close. She also looked up to her cousin, Dusk Lillies, because she was family but also because Cinder thought she was really cool. When she ever became very hotheaded, she would visit the library to go see her and learn how to read and ask Dusk Lillies questions of what her job was like as well as anything. When she was a little filly, Dusk would often read stories to her in order to calm her down. 

Cinder always thought of her time with Dusk as something special, something only for the two of them, which is why, when she found Seraphina spending time in the library with Dusk Lillies one day, she felt betrayed. Seraphina had apparently asked Dusk Lillies to take her in as her student, in order to become the next librarian. Dusk never agreed to promise that Seraphina would become the next librarian, but agreed to keep her around and teach her anything she might want to know.

Cinder was furious and slammed her book closed before walking over and snapping at Dusk Lillies, telling her how dare she take her enemy under her wing. Seraphina tried to reason with Cinder but Cinder burst into flames and burned a few of the cubs books. Since that day, Cinder was convinced that Dusk wouldn't spend time with her anymore, so she would just visit the library at night, when Dusk wasn't there. One day, out of frustration, she decided to look into one of Dusk's secret book chests, where she found a book on fire magic. Dusk walked in on her when she was reading it, but didn't get mad at Cinder. She just told her that she wouldn't want her to burn the library while experimenting, which is why she had locked that book away in her chest. So she let Cinder burrow the book, under the condition to only train under her supervision, just to make sure she won't accidentally start a fire.

 

The book became special to Cinder, teaching her how to control her flames and other special fire spells. Fire magic required a lot of emotion control, so over time Cinder became more aware of her feelings, and learned how to cope by putting her energy into magic. This way, she slowly lost interest in bullying others, and started to accept seeing Seraphina around in the library. Being now much more aware of her emotions and actions, she started regretting the time when she used to bully other cubs, and decided to put that behind her.

 

Ever since her mother's death, she had been terrified of death, losing others or dying. She always hid away when there was a funerary ceremony in the village - usually the entire village joins the ceremony to say a final goodbye to the one who passed away, watching the flames take the grifix's soul to the sky.

Death played a big role in fire magic, and so she soon realized that she had to accept it as a part of life, and learn that the value of life came from it's frailty. So she started going to funerary ceremonies. At the beginning she would just watch from far away, then started getting closer as she got used to it. 

The healer would bring a torch and set the body on fire. The body had been covered in special plants, which made the flames turn into the color of the deceased's magic, the colorful smoke raising up to the sky. Then, the healer would start dancing around the fire, moving as if she was just another flame in the fire.

Once she got over her repulsion of death, Cinder started to really enjoy the ceremony. The flames were beautiful, and so was the healer's dance. She truly loved to watch it.

 

And so, she started trying to practice the dance when she was alone in the forest. It was really hard, but she couldn't shake the feeling that the dance had something to do with the fire magic she was trying to learn.

 

She kept practicing for months, without making any progress, and was about to give up. One night, She heard a knock on her door. It was midnight and everyone was asleep, so she was ready to fight whoever was outside. But when she opened the door, it was her old "enemy", Seraphina Stone. The two of them stopped fighting for a while, but they never became close or anything, and Cinder had always been cold towards Seraphina, more out of regret for bullying her. So Cinder could not explain what she was doing outside her room at night. 

"I... found something... in the library... and thought you might make good use of it." Seraphina whispered, handing her a book. "And... sorry." She whispered before turing around and leaving. 

Cinder didn't get to say a word. "Sorry...?" why would Seraphina apologise to her...? She decided to ignore that and looked at the book once she closed the door. 

It was a new volume on fire magic... one she had never seen before. And there was a bookmark inside. She opened it on the marked page and read the title: "The Flame Dance".

 

It was about the dance she had attempted to perform all this time. But how...? She never told anyone about it, not even her brother or Dusk Lillies. The only way Seraphina would have known was if... she had watched her all this time. She had seen her do it all this time, and never told her. "So that's why she aplogised." Seraphina knew that if Cinder would know she had been watched, she would get really angry about it, and rightfully so, she was furious. 

Still, Cinder, lowered her gaze back in the book and started reading about the dance. All this time, she thought it was but a simple dance, but it turns out it was related to a spell she knew nothing about. So she flew in the forest and started performing, and she completely lost herself in her anger and all the feeling she had felt before. She was in a trance, and all she could see was fire, flames raising up to the sky, beings of fire surrounding her, ragin in the sky, scorching the forest, restless souls swirling around her. It was terrifying and beautiful, and she couldn't stop from it. She had never felt that way before, and she dared not stop, afraid that she would never feel the same way again.

 

But she was brutally stopped by someone's magic, binding her body, locking her limbs, and she feel out of the trance only to find herself surrounded by flaming trees and vegetation. What has she done?? She had set the forest on fire!!

She was terrifyied by what she had done, but a purple whisp of magic surrounded her and stopped the fire.

Cinder turned around to see the Queen and the Healer looking at her. "They saw me do this... There is no escape for me." she thought. But the Queen was smiling, almost close to laughing, while the healer just looked a little pissed off.

"Did you see what she did??" The queen turned to the healer. "She's way better than you at this!!" She then started giggling excited.

"Yeah, she's so much better at SETTING THE FOREST ON FIRE!! Lucky a supervisor warned you in time, before we would have all been turned to ASHES!!"

"Oh, come on, we're fine, aren't we? But you do have a point... we can't leave her roam freely, she's dangerous..." 

"You know, before Eclipsa, this used to be a job often performed by Flame Grifix, not the healer... And rightfully so, do I look like I have the bones for it???"

 

And so, since then, Cinder Whisp took on the job of performing the Funerary Ceremony, setting the body on fire and performing the Flame Dance around it. Apparently, while the spell could be performed by any grifix with a high magic level, it was much easier and more impressive when a flame fluffed grifix was doing it. And the ceremony was much more impressive and mesmerizing when Cinder Whisp was doing it. Her only regret was not being able to watch the dance anymore, as she was now the one performing it.