Sparky's Background

She grew up poor. Never knew her Father. He was off, in prison or dead or just generally somewhere else. Hardly important. Her Mother remarried, and thus she came to be in her Stepfather's household.

He was an abusive drunk. Arguments with his wife generally involved his fists. Discipline of his stepdaughter also generally involved his fists. It was a household of fear and misery, though no one went hungry.

At sixteen, she fell in love with the Boy. They planned to run away together, he and she, to escape the torment of their young lives. When she realized that she was pregnant, they started to actively plan, even to buying train tickets and starting to pack.

Her Stepfather found her out. He showed her some good discipline, then. He beat her to a bloody pulp for being a dirty little whore. When she woke up after a week in the hospital, she was no longer pregnant.

After she got out of the hospital, she could not return to her Stepfather's household. It no longer mattered that her Mother lived with him. By failing to intervene, her Mother had abandoned her to his ravages and anger. So she moved in with a Friend and began to search for gainful employment.

Too young, she faked her papers and got a job as a pole dancer at a local strip club. She had a pretty face, and combined with her athleticism and dexterity, she was fairly successful at her job. Finally, she began to get ahead.

It didn't last. Two years after she had escaped from him, her Stepfather found her. He humiliated her at work. Eventually, the bouncers hauled him away, but she was determined that such an incident would ever happen again.

She went to his house that night. Well after midnight, she let herself in the back door and doused the carpets with fuel. She lit a match and fled, the fire hot on her face. She choked on smoke, fell, and woke up on the wrong side of the Hedge.

The Warden needed someone to keep the torches lit in the Briar Patch. He looked her over, then handed her to the Jailer. She was set to work keeping all of the torches and fireplaces in the Arcadian prison lit. Every day and every night, she walked the corridors carrying her firebrand. Though she never was locked away in a cell, there was no freedom to her work. And the
price of failure was steep.

For a dozen years, the pretty little ifrit made rounds, blind to the suffering of others. She avoided the Jailer. She avoided the Warden. She avoided all of the terrors as best she could by focusing on the fires.

There was a riot. One of the prisoners started it. A prison break. As the prison burned, she slipped out. Back to humanity. Back to human civilization. Perhaps the fires would go out, but for the moment, they burned brightly and she fled.