The memory always began with the scent of jasmine and the warmth of a hearth that never seemed to go out.
Before she was a ghost, Meldra was a daughter. Her mother was a woman of radiant kindness, the kind of person who could coax a bloom from the driest soil.
Her father, a man of steady hands and soft laughter, promised her the world every morning at breakfast.
Life was a tapestry of golden holidays and festivals where the air tasted of honeyed fruit and the streets were lit with lanterns that looked like fallen stars.
On those nights, tucked safely between her parents, Meldra believed that sorrow was a myth told to children to make them appreciate the light.
~~~~
Then came the "experiment."
It was a word that would later become a curse in her vocabulary, but then, it was just a shadow.
A tragic mistake, a sudden flare of uncontrolled energy, and the tapestry was ripped to shreds.
In a single heartbeat, the jasmine scent was replaced by a sting of smoke.
The hearth went cold. The laughter stopped. An experiment that had her parents killed in the most horrifying way, changed Meldras life forever.
Meldra was left with nothing but her brother's hand gripping hers, their knuckles white as they stood amidst the rubble of a life they would never touch again.
They were cast into the grey of the streets.
For the first two years, they were a team. Her brother, older and fueled by a desperate, protective fire, taught her how to disappear into the shadows.
They huddled together under thin crates, sharing the heat of their breaths while the city moved around them, indifferent to the two orphans rotting in its corners.
But the streets are hungry. They eat the weak, and then they eat the brave.
The winter of the second year ... took her brother.
A fever, born of hunger and damp stone, turned his protective fire into a guttering candle.
Meldra watched him slip away in a damp alleyway, his eyes glassy and unfocused. When his hand finally went cold in hers, the last string connecting her to the "Pretty Princess" she once was finally snapped.
She was alone. Truly, terrifyingly alone.
~~~~
The next decade was not a life but more like an endurance test.
Meldra became a creature of instinct. She learned the exact timing of the baker's rounds to snatch a burnt crust from the bin.
She learned how to run until her lungs felt like they were filled with crushed glass, fleeing from shopkeepers who saw a thief where there was only a starving girl.
She grew thin, her ribs counting the days of her hunger. Her skin, once soft and cared for, became a map of scars.
She didn't cry anymore.
Tears required hydration she didn't have to spare. Instead, she existed in a state of perpetual, heavy sorrow that one would call depression so thick it felt like she was walking through water every single day.
She stopped looking at the lanterns during the festivals. They weren't stars anymore.
They were just reminders of everything she had lost. She would sit in the freezing rain, her back against a damp brick wall.
Her mind a blank slate of misery.
She was waiting for the end. She was waiting for the cold to finally do to her what it had done to her brother.
~~~~
On a night where the wind cut through her rags like a serrated blade, Meldra collapsed near the edge of a carriage path.
Her legs simply gave out.
She layed in the mud, her cheek pressed against the freezing cobblestone.
She could hear the distant sound of music from a nearby gala, the laughter of people who had never known a day of hunger.
She closed her eyes, ready to let the darkness take her. The world was blurry, a haze of grey and black. Her heart slowed, a tired drum beating its final rhythm.
She didn't want to fight. She didn't want to steal. She just wanted the silence.
And then, through the rhythmic pounding of the rain, came a new sound.
The heavy, rhythmic clack of hooves.
Meldra didn't look up. She didn't have the strength to beg. She just layed there in the dirt, a broken thing.
As the carriage came to a complete, heavy stop beside her.