On her 12-year-old birthday, Maeve’s purpose became clear. That dreaded morning her parents left home to get food from a nearby market to get supplies to make some sweet pastries. While they didn’t have much money to spare, the mother and father did their best to provide for their daughter and give the child the life she deserved. As they entered the market and started to pick out some eggs, a loud explosion could be heard from the other end of the market, and a puff of black smoke filled the air above. The mother heard screams of pain and knew she needed to help; she was on this plane for a reason. The father tried to stop her, not wanting to take a risk on an important day, but the mother pushed him away and went towards the chaos where she could suddenly feel a heat filling the air. It was fire. The marketplace erupted in flames, and in its spot stood a figure shooting flames from their hands. The mother realized they might not be of much use but knew she had to try.
Her will to try only got her killed first, then the rest of the marketplace, and the father soon behind. Customers, tourists, and shopkeepers, all ash and burned on the ground. The newly 12-year-old girl waited for hours for her parents before she got scared of the sun setting. She picked up all the courage she had to walk to the market and try to find them. She and many other family members stood around the carnage; cries and screams of grief filled the air, and Maeve soon joined them as she found a body with her mother’s necklace on it and a body with her father’s wedding ring. Her parents were taken from her.
She was left with nothing but what she could find in their home, some money, clothes, books, and her mother’s blanket. The young girl set off to try to continue her life in a way to keep her parents proud. Over the years, she took odd jobs in and out of the town to get money for food or lodging, anything that she could use to keep a roof over her head. But she was only a child. Maeve knew this wasn’t a life a child should live. Constantly in fear of the world around you, not knowing the next meal you’re going to eat, or sleeping out in the rain. Maeve didn’t want any other children having to be this way, and she met her fair share as she wandered the streets through the years. No child should be forced to live like scraps. Maeve understood her purpose from that day forward.
When Maeve got old enough to work a proper job, a simple barmaid, she worked as hard as her body would let her. She took extra shifts when her other workers were too drunk or seemingly just forgot they were supposed to work that night. She saved every tip she got tossed her way and put it away until she finally had enough to quit at age 25. People would always ask why she worked until her fingers were bruised or her eyes could barely stay open, and her answer never varied.
“I am going to make a difference.”
The day she got to quit, she uprooted her life and made her way to Seakeep to make her dream a reality. Being from Eldermeadow, a much different town than Seakeep, her way of life changed completely. She was now surrounded by people left and right, and the city was much busier day-to-day than she was used to. That didn’t stop her from finding a vacant building on one of those busy streets and buying it.
It was a simple building, two stories, and was able to be renovated to have many rooms within it. With the money Maeve saved up over the years, she put it all into making the building just perfect. In the end, the bottom floor was suited with a large kitchen, a living area, and then a classroom sort of room. The upstairs had a room fitted with more than a dozen beds and then some more private bedrooms where she lived. After a few long months of slow renovations, the building was finished. Maeve stepped out to read the sign that hung up on her building with a proud smile.
Maeve Ruina’s House for Lost Children.
——-
Through the years of childhood, living on the streets, working her hands rough, and becoming the woman she dreamed of being, there was much more than just money being made.
Maeve had to go most of her life learning about life and herself without any guidance. She followed stray groups of travelers around if she heard there was money to be made. Some of those groups were filled with terrible people, and Maeve wouldn’t learn that until later. She learned more from her errors than anything else. So far in her life lessons, they taught her not to give up and continue on her path.
While those lessons were learned through work or rude people, as she turned 18, those lessons started to come from something else.
Come her 18th birthday; she lived in the tavern she had been working in in Eldermeadow. She lay in her bed that never seemed to get comfortable, asleep with the one piece of her parents she still had left, a blanket that her mother made. Her mother always had it wrapped around herself or Maeve, even if the sun was out. Red and orange swirls were sewn into the blanket, with a sun and three sunbeams descending from it in the middle. Maeve always found it beautiful and filled her with a warmth and sense of hope she could never place. She always assumed it was because it was her mother’s.
She was woken up that morning with the sun pooling into her room and hitting her face, her eyes slowly opening. She rubbed her face and started to sit up for the day when she took a closer look at the “sunlight” coming into her room. With closer observation, it wasn’t coming into her room; it was in her room. She sat up faster, her eyes having to squint to try to understand what she was looking at.
“Oh, my apologies. I forget that when you start out, I can be very blinding,” A voice spoke from the large ray of light in front of her window. Maeve let out a slightly awkward laugh and swiftly got out of her bed and walked backward toward her door. “Please don’t be afraid, Ms. Ruina, I am a friend,” It was a man’s voice, soft and as pleasant sounding as much as a random man’s voice in a bedroom can sound.
“How do you know my name? Why are you the sun?” Maeve asked and looked for anything to use as a weapon, ending up with a candlestick in her hand. The large ray of the sun seemed to sigh and shimmer slightly.
“Here-” He spoke, and as the light shimmered, it shifted from floor to ceiling into the shape of a man’s body. There was still a distinct glow coming from him, and his clothes were all a crisp yellow and gold color, his eyes glowing the brightest. “This form is usually better,” he said and smiled. Maeve couldn’t place the words she wanted to use, but eventually, her mouth opened again.
“Okay… this still doesn’t help me understand what you are doing. I will call the guards!” She spouted off with the useless candlestick high in the air now. This only made the man laugh and shake his head.
“Guards will not see me, Ms. Ruina. You can because you are meant to. Just as your mother did, and her mother before that, and so on. I’ve come to show you who you are.” He said to her and smiled once again as if he was a saint to this poor barmaid. Maeve laughed at this, and her hand fell back to her side.
“My mother? She is dead. I don’t know what your deal is, but I know who I am, and I don’t need this.” She said and put a hand on her hip, now a little annoyed by this man’s ego.
“Ms. Ruina, if I may, there is something inside you that you have yet to awake. I am here to help you. I am here to give you what your family has had for many generations. To help you make a difference in the world.” He spoke. That final sentence was what made Maeve look at him with a more serious face and concern.
“What did you just say?” She asked him quietly. The man took a step closer to her and put a hand up.
“To help you make a difference. Maeve, I can help you make a difference in this world.” He said, his voice oozing with sweetness to the women. All Maeve ever wanted to do was to make a difference. He possibly knew that to help persuade her a bit more. He took a moment while she was thinking to go to the blanket on her bed. “This is my symbol. My name is Belanus, and I help give sun, warmth, and light to this beautiful world. I can bestow my abilities to people of your world to help people here feel my graces,” He said as he ran a hand over the blanket. “Your mother did such amazing things… I am sorry about her passing. But now, now, it is your turn, Ms. Ruina, to take over the mantle.” He turned back to her with an even bigger smile on his face, one that was making the room light up.
Of course, at hearing this, Maeve was confused and ultimately thought it was a cruel joke being played on her, but the way he spoke about her mother and the blanket made that seem less credible. Maeve looked at this glowing man. “Belanus, okay…” She said after a moment.
“Tell me more,” the newly 18-year-old Meave spoke to the god. Those three words added a whole new light to Maeve’s life and goals.
—-
The seven years that passed between her first meeting with Belanus and her opening up her orphanage was a life filled with work and even more work to try to understand the powers she had been given. Belanus helped her occasionally, teaching her how to light a candle or light up a corner of the room. Still, whether it was the stress of working almost 24 hours a day or her own frustration, she wasn’t getting any better at her new powers.
It also might have been the fact of what her powers were. She expected light, hope, savior. She was given the same horror that killed her parents. There were many moments in those years filled with fear in herself. “You are more than your fears Maeve. Fire is cleansing, a beautiful gift, and a way to bring warmth and solitude to the world around you. You have the ability to save and heal people, Maeve. Are you really going to focus on the negatives?” Belanus would tell her as he saw her wavering with a flame in her hand. Words to appease and make Maeve change her view, always speaking in a way that soothed her but ensured he got what he wanted. Maeve’s concerns were pushed to the side. He was right… He had to be, right? He was a deity. It could bring warmth, and she could help people in more ways than before. She should be grateful.
—
Three years into her business opening, Maeve soon had more children than she could ever imagine. At times she could have up to 35 children staying at her home, and she made sure to give each one love, education, shelter, and food. She didn’t want any of them living the way she had so many years ago. The number of kids would fluctuate as some would get adopted or grow too old and move away, but currently, she has 37 children staying in her home. She adored them all, giving them everything she could from herself. Maeve was living out her dreams, but that didn’t stop Belanus from nagging her about practicing her gifts. He wanted her to get stronger and be as powerful as he knew she could be.
To make him happy, Maeve put all 37 children to bed that night, reading a book to the large room of children lying in their cots. She gave them each a glass of water before she took to the living room with a candle and the book Belanus gave her to hone her mind and skills. “Happy? I am going to practice now, you big oaf,” She said into the sky and then let out a long breath to help settle her heart rate.
Maeve closed her eyes and didn’t open them until she was ready. Her two hands rose, and she looked to the unlit candle in front of her for a moment. A second later, a simple flame appeared on the wick. “Ah!” She said happily. “It doesn’t take me a whole hour anymore!” She laughed out loud. As much as Belanus was slightly annoying about practicing, she did want to get better. She wanted to make her mother proud.
Next, Meave attempted to light up the room. She stood up and eased her heart rate before her hands rose once more. She had done light conjuring before but only in corners or when she needed a small light for reading. A whole room was going to be new. She started the spell, her fingers flexing as a very dim light appeared from the center of the room. “Come on…” She spoke to herself as she tried to get it brighter. It flickered, having a hard time getting any brighter without faltering. “You can do this, Maeve, come on!” She said a bit more aggressively, and the light seemed to flicker to a brighter shade but not to the whole room as she wanted it. “Come on!” She then shouted, her voice aggravated. She shook her hands to try to get the light to all four corners.
Light did appear in all four corners of the room, but not as a simple conjuring, as flames. Fire trickled onto the living room walls and then ran up to the ceiling, floors, and curtains faster than any fire she had seen before. “N-no- what happened? No!” She screamed out and started to run out of the room as the flames only followed her, her hands still engulfed, and for once, she herself could feel the heat from her fire. She began to hear muffled screaming from upstairs as the flames burned through the ceiling. Maeve ran to the stairs to try to save her children, but she was only able to get up halfway up before a beam fell from the side of the room and fell in front of her. The beam caused the stairs to break to pieces in front of her, creating a large gap between Maeve and the floor upstairs. The flames were moving towards the kitchen and were already flooding up the ceilings and into the upstairs rooms. Maeve felt the heat hitting her body, the smoke filling her lungs and stray flames catching the hem of her clothes.
The screams from upstairs got louder before they seemed to slowly stop one by one. Maeve was frozen to her spot on the broken stairs, crying out for the children; her tears were vaporizing before they could even hit her cheeks. The flames were hotter and faster than any normal flames. While smoke filled her nose, so did a smell she hated to recognize. The smell of burning flesh. That day when she was 12, she could smell it off her parents, and now she was smelling from the children upstairs.
She then felt something wrap around her body and looked down to see a golden ray of light around her, and before she could fight it, she was being picked up out of the crumbling roof and into the air. Maeve was able to look down and see holes in the roof that showed the burning bedrooms. Maeve saw dozens of beds up in flames with small dark figures burning in them; some were on the floor around as it was clear the children were trying to run, and some were still laid in their beds. The gold ray of light landed her a block or two away from the building and into a field. Her clothes were singed along with her hair, and Maeve’s hands were covered in black ash that didn’t seem to rub off even with her trying to wipe it away on her dress. Her hands were shaking as she saw the gold ray of light form back into the familiar face of Belanus.
“Maeve…” He spoke softly, and before anything else came out of his mouth, she was up from the ground and running to him, attempting to tackle the deity to the ground, but she fazed right through him and fell to the ground behind him.
“You did this!” She screamed out, her voice course from the smoke that was in her lungs and throat. “You did this!” She cried out, tears finally able to fall down her face. “Take this back- take my powers back! I don’t want them!” her voice was quivering with fear of herself and what she had done. He only shook his head.
“I can not do that. They have been in you since you were born. All I have done is show you what you can be. You did this, not me. Take pride in how magnificent your powers are.” He said to her, “You are so amazing, Maeve. You are capable of doing so much in this world. Don’t let this stop you. Let this motivate you!” He said, easily disregarding whatever Maeve was going through right now and not caring about the dozens of children who burned alive in the one place they felt safe. “You can be so much! Make a difference, learn your powers, become the change.” He said, and with a wave of his hand, the same book she brought to the living room to help her powers appeared in front of her, not a burn mark in sight. With that, Belanus left her in that field, the burning building still in the line of sight of Maeve. She watched as it crumbled to the ground. The flames never hit the buildings around it; her flames only destroyed the orphanage.
She burned down her only “difference.”