Souls of Fire Read Free

impossible, the unimaginable. In short: I was lost in my own little world of stories in which no one really existed but me, so that I had nobody to share it all with.
    Ultimately, that might also have been the reason why I had never felt the least bit attracted to the opposite sex ― boys just hadn’t felt real to me.
    This will just have to do , I sighed internally, looking at the outfit I had selected for that day.  There really wasn’t anything wrong with my looks, but I felt so nervous and insecure at the thought of all the strangers I would meet, students as well as professors, that I wanted to look nothing short of amazing on my first day at college. Too bad, I would have to settle for looking pretty.
    I was wearing an airy white ruffled cotton blouse cut out in a square, showing part of my white delicate shoulders and the skin above my breasts along with the birthmark I no longer wanted to hide. The blouse reached down to a little past my hips. Its long flowing sleeves hugged my wrists and then widened, letting the laced cuffs spread out to the middle of my long pale fingers.
    My thick fiery curls sprung up around me in an untamed manner and spiraled downward to come to rest against the hem of my favorite pair of low-cut stonewashed blue jeans, which I wore on top of a pair of candy-apple red high heels.
    As I was blessed with a nice rosy complexion and very long dark eyelashes despite my red hair, I didn’t need to put on any makeup.
    My full lips had a nice rosy color as well, but I liked them a little redder, so I grabbed the dove-grey bag I had already slung around my shoulder and stuck my hand inside, shuffling around books, pens, used and unused tissues and packs of chewing gum until my groping fingers finally found my favorite lipstick.
    I puckered my lips in front of the mirror and applied a thin layer of crimson to them. Placing the lipstick back in my bag, I was turning away from the mirror, when I caught a glimpse of my birthmark out of the corner of my eye. I whirled back around to look at it more closely and gasped.
    It can’t be! I thought, my heart beating loudly in my ears. A sound like rushing water was drowning out every other sound but that of my pulse.
    When was the last time I had looked at it? My mind was racing, throwing images upon images of the past days at me, bleeding together into one confusing swirl of color and motion. Panic pulled me under, clamped down painfully on my chest, and made it impossible for me to breathe.
    Calm down ― Oh God! ― Breathe! Breathe! I silently screamed at myself, otherwise unmoving, trying to get a grip on myself.
    It’s just my imagination! Nothing else! I’m in the real world, remember? Right?
    I blinked a couple of times, desperately trying to get my blurry vision back into focus. I took a deep controlled breath and let my eyes move once more in the direction of my left upper chest, utterly convinced of having hallucinated.
     
    A shiver ran down my spine.
     
    Impossible! , my mind screamed over and over again, the word seemingly echoing around my thoughts as if bouncing off imaginary walls; the word as clear and distinguishable as if I had spoken it aloud.
    Or had I actually screamed out loud, I wondered, listening into the silence for panicked sounds coming from my parents’ bedroom, which would have indicated that my screams had been heard.
     
    Nothing. No sounds at all.
     
    Of course, my dad was already at work as it was already later in the morning. My mother, though normally also at work by now, was sick in bed this morning with a mild case of the flu that had started up last night, and would have heard me if I had screamed out loud.
    Gasping for air, I rushed to my bedroom window, clawing at the window latch with fumbling fingers, my hands shaking violently. After several moments, I finally managed to open the window. I flung my head and upper body through the window frame and greedily sucked in the cool crisp morning air.
    It was