Another Year Older

[Candy Hart]

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Rabbit
Happy birthday to you…

March 26, 2012 — Monday, 3 AM

Candy sat on her couch, surrounded by dim lighting. The red opal, FireStar, rested patiently on the coffee table before her. Silently, as she took a long pull from the Badsider she held, she regarded the stone. The pair didn’t really converse, but Candy could feel the opal like a shadow through her mind. She might have been able to resist FireStar’s promptings, but—having no talent for magic on her own—she could do nothing to keep it from accessing her memories.

Sweet sixteen… in love… Jesse… a special night… her first time… the bliss…

The betrayal…

Seven years to the day and the internal scars remained just as much as the external ones etched into her skin.

Silly little Rabbit… did you really think someone could love you?

She had. And the realization that it’d all been a game, a lie, cut worse than the blade he trailed in slow patterns through her flesh. It hurt all the more because she knew she should have known better, her parents had taught her to know better, and she’d still fallen for it—hook, line, and sinker.

Not for the last time…

Candy looked toward the clock on the wall, a tarnished silver disc with black hands and no numbers. Jay would arrive in a couple of hours, if he didn’t change his mind about training together for their fight at the Brawler.

You.

Unbidden, the memory of Jay asking her to stay with him filtered into her thoughts, followed by their first kiss the following day. FireStar pulled the memories to the surface, trailed her through the motions all over again. Her walls had been down, she’d let him in, and in the end he’d gone away…

Did you really think someone could love you?

Jesse’s words haunted her as the emotions tried to surface—the hurt and the want. She might not have been able to do anything about the opal in her mind, but long practice made her push the feelings back down and inside without a second thought. She cared, he left, end of story. The hurt and doubt hardened, building a barrier against her true feelings for Jay. Only the subtle anger at herself—and at him—remained outside the wall.

Candy left the rock and beer on the table as she went to prepare things for the first training session.

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you