Ashes Of The Phoenix

“It's a private plane, silly! Get in!”

That last sentence shocked her so much that she got into the car without realizing it. The door closed carefully behind her.

“Who the hell are you, the son of a prince?” She asked. “Yes, the son of the Prince of Evil!” He replied wryly. “Shut up” she replied, annoyed, leaning her face on one hand and looking out of the window.

“Wait! Slow down! Stop!” The girl shouted suddenly. The car stopped at the curb.

“What's the matter?” Asked the little ‘Sir’. “I have to see a person” she answered and immediately got out of the car and skated down in the lanes of an elegant neighbourhood.

Jag reached her shortly after, just as she was ringing the doorbell of a building. He watched her from a short distance.

An elderly little man came out of the door and stopped to look at her in surprise: “Fade, you're back... it's the first time you’ve come to see me when you're not dripping with blood... what's wrong child?”

The girl didn’t answer; she just looked down at the ground swallowing her regret. “You're leaving, aren’t you?”

She nodded her head slightly, and then she quickly embraced the man who had rescued her several times in those years and ran away before the situation became unsustainable even for a person like her. “I wish you good luck and take care of yourself” were the last words she heard before the door closed silently behind her.

The girl reached the child, who didn’t have the courage to say anything to her. “Come on, let’s go prince,” she said, trying to seem more determined than she really was at that moment. The two went back to the car and didn’t speak to each other.

The car stopped at a small out-of-the-way airport on the outskirts of the city. The girl began to show the first doubts about her sudden departure: “I have nothing with me; I don’t even have an identity…”

“We’ll fly with a private airline, for now you don’t need an identity. When we get there, we'll see what we can do”, in saying so, he waited for the door to open and then got out of the car. Fade sat in the car, confused, but when her door opened, she followed him.

As they climbed the ladder to the small airplane, he couldn’t help but ask, “How do you manage to go everywhere on those skates?”

“They're rollerblades,” she said, “and I've been wearing them almost forever...” she answered, thinking that it was more than enough of an explanation.

Inside the passenger compartment, the boy amusedly watched the girl who was having a lot of trouble settling in her seat. Despite the fact that the plane had far fewer passenger seats than a normal flight, Fade banged into everything; furthermore, she clumsily hit the flight attendants who tried to help her to her seat with her hairdo.

Once the funny demonstration was over and the two unfortunate and decisively stunned stewards had been dismissed, she snorted: “Was it necessary for them to ruin my hair?” She complained. “It’s not really suitable for sitting in an airplane; you can fix it once we land...” was his answer.

The rest of the journey proceeded in total silence.

The girl looked out of the window and reflected on a strange similarity: despite a lifetime of escaping, the world around her had continued to go round while she was still standing in the same spot. Being there, in that precise moment, on that plane, forced her to wonder if she could have considered it a first true step towards some undetermined direction.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the boy. “Is it the first time that you travel by plane?”

The girl answered without even turning. “Yes”

“Are you scared?”

This time she turned towards him in surprise: “Why should I be scared?”

“Well I don’t know, many people are afraid of traveling by plane: they fear a disaster. Not having an escape route makes them restless and they begin to say things like they prefer to travel attached to the ground...”

“It doesn’t worry me,” she said firmly and turned back to the window.

“Rather, what are you going to do once we get there?” She asked, to break the silence.

“I'm going to find the Momuhts! I want to be part of their band!”

“What a terrible idea!” The girl continued without giving him too much importance.

“No it’s not! They’ll welcome me! My arrival will change their lives!”

His tone of voice caught the attention of the redhead; the child seemed to be obsessed by that band.

“You never seemed like a normal guy to me, now I’m sure of it” she concluded with disapproval.

Jag leaned back in his seat with an evil grin on his face. He had great projects in his mind for his addition to the band and he had every intention of using any means to gain the favour of the group’s leader. He dozed off indulging in his childish dreams, fantasizing on the wonderful prospects for his future.

A new beginning

The next morning, Fade woke up in the comfortable bed of the private two room apartment they had rented. She stretched out and slipped out of the thick duvet, and sat in awe on the mattress; for her it had always been a struggle to get out of the warm bed of her shelter to face the cold mornings; waking up and finding herself in a warm and comfortable environment brought back memories she had lost many years earlier.

She slipped on the skates she had left at the foot of her bed and skated to the window. She was wearing flannel pyjamas, prepared by the owners of the apartment.

The noisy traffic beyond the glass didn’t seem different from that of the place she had left the previous night; she could hardly believe that just a few hours earlier she had been in a different geographical area.

Already feeling as though she was in a small cage, she decided to go out. She washed and dressed quickly and in the bathroom she found some cans of hair wax, probably placed there on Jag's order. Quite a while later, the door handle lowered and the girl emerged into a hallway covered with grey carpets and adorned by pictures with golden frames. The redhead couldn’t wait to leave that place, and she moved towards the only door beyond hers, in the hallway.

Once she passed that threshold, she found herself in a large hall in which, from behind a circular desk placed in the middle of the room, a girl welcomed her. “Good morning. I have a message for you from the young Master.”

She approached her and took the note she handed her. The message was clearly from Jag: in addition to having an awful handwriting, it was all decorated with childish designs and incomprehensible writings, and it had oil stains all over it, as if he had written it while he was eating potato chips.

After a long while in which she tried to decipher the contents of the message, she realized that he was giving her an appointment. “I’ll meet you at 11 am at the lions' square. Jag”.

“And how the hell am I supposed to know where that is!” She blurted, thinking out loud, and then she realized she had raised her voice a little too much.

She was thoughtful for a few minutes. She had no idea of what time it was, so she looked around in search of answers and on one wall she saw a set of clocks set on the different times of the world's capitals, until she found the clock showing their time. It was only 08:30 am.

“If I can help you,” the receptionist interrupted the silence “The young Master has ordered a taxi for you.”

Those words annoyed her, she didn’t need a baby sitter, nor did she want to feel indebted towards someone.

“No, thanks, I’ll get around by myself,” she replied, “I just need a map of the city.”

A few minutes later the girl was outside in the crazy traffic, holding a large map on which were indicated only the starting point and the point of arrival of her trip. She tried to memorize some of the main streets but gave up shortly afterwards, the place was so full of people walking back and forth that it was almost impossible for her to skate. She had always been accustomed to a much wider living space, because the people in her neighbourhood made sure to stay far away from her when she was around. In that city, however, she was nobody, a perfect stranger: “and not even particularly outstanding” she thought, crossing a group of punks seated on some secluded steps. Her thoughts were giving her a headache, so she decided to walk through secondary roads. There, the streets were definitely less trafficked and she could move faster.

The search for the place she needed to reach was very unnerving but at least she didn’t have time to think about the life she had left. At times, it even seemed to her to be walking along familiar roads, she stopped every now and then to look at the overflowing windows of some Arabian shop with the temptation to go in and steel something, because she was starving. She cursed Jag for letting her to get used to eating early in the morning.

She stood still in front of a store remembering those days, and then she shook herself, deciding not to think about them, focusing her attention on the items in front of her.

On a side shelf, lying between multi-coloured diaries, one with a black cover and shiny Gothic accentuated designs stood out. The girl couldn’t help but feel a connection between her and that object in that exact situation. Then she skated away.

Over two hours later, she found herself in a large square full of pigeons. She hated pigeons; she couldn’t stand the sight of them since she had seen a group of them fighting over a fried chicken thigh on the ground. She also hated fried chicken, which is why that disgusting association of 'fried cannibalism' aroused her disgust for birds.

Suddenly she heard Jag calling her from afar, his voice was accompanied by the noise of flapping wings from a large group of birds. Turning around, she saw the boy sitting on the back of a large lion's statue; his waving had scared all the birds around him. She reluctantly skated toward him, banging her skates noisily to get rid of the wretched animals that blocked her road, but they just flew a few yards further and continued to peck the ground; others flew around her head making her feel under the attack of an enemy fleet.