When she first emerged from the earth, scorched and haggard, the first things she noticed were the flowers.

In time she would learn of their ordinariness, of their common nature and willingness to spring from any surface. In that moment, their thin stems and golden petals, mere slips straining to a faraway sky, were nothing short of miraculous.

She cradled one in her hands, avoiding any sort of disturbance, and promised to herself that her life would only be full of things as beautiful as this from then on.

—

When her face was ground into grit and stone, her first thoughts went to the ice.

It stung at her soles, sank into her bones, shook her breath, utterly implacable and inescapable. Even when she traveled where the earth and sun offered more warmth she never managed to go quite beyond its reach— its glaciers towered in the distance, sheathing the mountains and the landscape, enveloping her in their chill. Its scars marked the very rocks digging into her cheek, fine lines etched into the stone etched into her skin.

She swore that she would move somewhere warm, someday. Not a place that matched the seething depths she left, but one where she could pay the air no mind at all.

A crushing hand pressed her harder against the rock, nearly smashing her eye. She wrenched her head back and screamed.

—

When she rose to her feet among the wreckage, she found herself unable to think of anything at all.

Blood sat spattered on her skin, her horns, the rocks beneath her feet. She hardly noticed the sting of gravel pressed into her wounds as she brought her hands to her face, staining her fingers with rusting crimson. Her eyes remained uncovered, wholly transfixed on the fleshy mess before her. How were they now dead before her?

There was the scream, the splitting pain and then—

Her mind pushed.

The back of her head still faintly thrummed, traveling through her skull and down her spine. She stretched out one hand, as if to direct the thrum out from her body.

A small rock near the pile of gore wobbled, rose just above the ground, and toppled back down.

She glanced at her hand. Her fingers opened, then curled into a fist. She turned her attention back to the rock.

Again.

—

The others learned to think much more of her, in time.

Oreanthi. The untouchable. The unkillable. 

At first, her name was a challenge. Fresh arrivals with sulfur still in their lungs shouted their empty incantation, or let their roiling bloodlust seep out along with the fumes as they stalked her trail. They attacked with brute force, with guile, with powers of her own. 

Oreanthi, the unassailable. 

The bodies took so long to rot in the cold. It took centuries for the pile to shrink, for challenge to become warning. Smoke only somewhat blunted the smell.

She learned how to hurl boulders, turn minds inside out, but never to fully shunt away the ugliness that followed her.

—

Dressed in the finest of fabrics and lace, Oreanthi thought nothing but simply watched. Fingers curled around a glass of water— chilled, no ice— she remained unmoving as the trees and shrubs and flowers swayed outside her seat by the window pane. 

At the edge of flowerbeds she spotted a single plant she now knew the name of. An old friend. A common garden weed.

She undid the window latch and reached into the breeze. The plant twitched, bent, and rose from its bed, roots intact, soaring into her outstretched hand. Its ragged leaves trembled in her palm; its stem lay sumptuously ensconced between the gold rings adorning her fingers. Frail golden petals brushed her jewelry, a feeble crown bowing unsteadily to the wind.

With closed eyes she slowly inhaled the smell of dirt and smoke that lingered as if it had never left.