(Okay folks, this is my first time writing a female lead. Be gentle!)

Every time it was the same; Claire’s day would start out great: the 5 year old would wake up to the comforting fuzziness of her pet stuffed wolf, on her bed, in her room. The first thing she would see was all of the Unicorn posters and images of princesses and happiness and clouds. She would toddle down the stairs playfully as her wolf, secured by the paw in her little hand, would bound down the stairs right behind her. The sunshine would light up the kitchen through the glass doors and sink window as her mom set a place for one, with her favorite brightly colored crisp cereal.

“There’s a rainbow in very bowl!”, her mom would say cheerfully as she placed the bowl on the kitchen table, pulling the chair back for the little girl.

After breakfast, Claire would go out to her backyard with Wolfie tow. Some days, he was the Big Bad Wolf, and she was Rd Riding Hood. Others, he was the prince, and she was the Princess. Today, she decided to play something new: She would be the brave Warrior Girl, and Wolfie would be her faithful side-pup. They spent the better part of the morning running around the yard, slaying monsters and saving citizens.

That was when the Light Came. It nearly blinded young Claire as it shot down from the sky, centering itself in the center of town. Minutes later, Fire shot up from the ground. It was centered around Claire’s home. The girl was tossed away by the force of the eruption, while her house and Mom were incinerated almost instantly.

Though she was too young to realize it at the time, the World had just changed, and not for the better.

Claire woke up from her nightmare drenched in cold sweat. Again. She wasn’t alone, though – it turned out that Newtopia wasn’t the only place where this happened. Cities all over the world, from New York to Moscow, Bejing to Sydney – all went up in light and flame. Some had called it ‘The Rapture’, others called it ‘Apocalypse’. Even those who weren’t religious had a name for it:
‘The day we all became fucked’.

A great war soon erupted, but it was no more contest between mortals. Beings, carried by the Light and the Flame, spewed forth, and began to wage there own private war with mankind stuck in the middle. As a result, Claire’s entire generation became orphaned, either because of the damage wrought by the Fire and Light, or as collateral damage of the war.

Now fifteen, but not alone, Claire stepped from her bed and walked to the sole window the bunker she and other kids her age stayed in, hoping to ride out the war and find safety. Somewhere. Someday. As she peered out the window, the fighting in the distance belied the supernatural nature of this war: A red object, shaped like a human and covered in flame, collided with a similar being that was white, and covered in light. This repeated many times in several seconds as the beings rose to higher and higher altitudes with each collision. Though there should have been quite the ruckus from the fighting, there was no sound.

“Wha’cha doin’ boss?” Ricky asked. At thirteen, he was the second oldest of the group, and helped Claire as much as he could, though his general lack of maturity make things difficult at times.

“Can’t sleep,” Claire muttered without taking her eye off of the fight.

“Like any other night then,” Ricky lamented; he’d been having the same problem as well.

“Think it will ever end?”

Ricky sounded more like he was complaining about a thunderstorm than the Apocalypse, but that was his way sometimes.

“I don’t know,” Claire replied, eyes still fixed off in the distance. “All I can say is I plan on all of us seeing it.”

The fight in the distance ended as the one covered in flame watched the one covered in light fall to the ground, the light winking out shortly after. Claire sighed as she picked up her sidearm from a nearby counter, and set it in the windowsill by her bed and went back to sleep.

The war between fire and light didn’t seem to be going so well for the light. Claire understood that sooner or later, people would have to stand their ground against the flame, or be swallowed by it, like her mother.

(Like with the last two, please comment below, and let me know if this story should keep going!)