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I guess I shouldn't be so hard on Amber's story telling style. She was just making some notes as we talked about our pasts and how we got where we were today. Here she gets to the first real adventure I had.

It wasn't too long until something happened.

The young girl's best friend took a snow globe to show and tell.

Before she had to move, we were really close. Sarah and I were like twins.  Adrian, Sarah and I used to spend a lot of time together once we found each other -- we had all just moved into town, didn't quite fit in, and we were all a little quiet then.

Guess it is better for Amber to call me the "young girl" instead of the "little girl" -- though perhaps "petite" or "slender" or, heck, I don't know."

It was a family heirloom.  The grandmother had brought it over from the old country as a child and she had it from her grandmother.

The friend tripped and the globe went into a storm sewer.

It was terrible.  Sarah had promised to take the very best of care of that globe. Her grandmother had lost just about everything getting out of the old country, and it was the only thing she had been able to keep, and the only toy her grandmother had as a child. When Sarah tripped and dropped it, she just started crying, she didn't know what to do. I knew the rope could stretch and figured it would just strech and let me down the six or seven feet down to the globe, I'd grab it and climb right up and no one would need to know about the snow globe falling down and into the storm sewer.

The young girl offered to go get it.

She was sure that with a magic rope it would be a cinch.  After all, she knew that the rope had been three and a half feet long, and that ofter the first adventure it could stretch and magically untie itself.  What she did not realize was that it could only stretch to four feet.

So she ended up dropping carefully into the storm sewer.

Well, I couldn't just give up when it wouldn't go any farther.  I figured I would find a way to get out of the mess, if nothing else Sarah could run to my house and get my brother.

And right on the edge of a group of rats.  Big rats.  Giant magical spriggin rats, almost three feet from the snout to the base of the tail.  Delighted to have found a magic globe they were going to take home and eat and hoping something else would come along.  If she had been invisible they would have smelled her and eaten her.  But she blended in.

She followed them down the sewer and to the deep grate that is supposed to lock such creatures away.  It had been propped open long ago and rusted that way.

Ok, you are probably thinking I'd lost my mind about now. Except I didn't know that they would have eaten me, and they were big, but not any bigger than a large dog.  I'm not going to admit that they looked kind of cute.

As she saw them head home from there, she slowed down and let them walk away from her.  Then she backtracked and followed the sewer until she found a ladder that made its way to a man hole cover.

See, I was right.  I figured out a way to get out of the mess.  Of course I was a mess, sewer gunk all over me.  It was just a storm sewer, not a "black water" sewer, but still.  Ick.

Now the first thing she did was wash herself off with the hose.  Then she got some bottled alcohol and some miracle penetrating oil and some strike anywhere emergency matches and a self-lighting flare and a pocket full of new nickels.

Then she went to rescue the globe.

She let herself back into the sewer.  She worked the oil into the grate so that it could move again, and found the lock bar to use when the grate was covered. She got closer to the sewer cavern where the rats lived and poured out all the alcohol, so that it began to slowly move down-stream.  Then she walked up to the table they had the globe on.  She walked past it.  Then she took a handful of change and threw it into the far corner.  As it caught eveyone's attention she began to sprint the other direction, grabbed the globe and headed for the exit.

At this point I didn't really understand "blending" -- I sort of figured I was invisible. Not only that, but I figured if everyone was looking the other way, they'd never notice me.  So I made a mistake -- I was just a kid. Don't say it. I'm still just a kid and this time I may not survive the mistake I made. If you are reading this, I probably didn't make it.

The rats suddenly saw her.  She dropped the rest of the change and kept running.  The nickels distracted some rats, but others followed.  Then she lit the self-lighting fuse and dropped it in the water.  Poof, it sputtered and shot out steam, then the alcohol caught on fire.  As the rats were momentarily baffled by the fire, she sprinted past the grate and slammed it shut, pushing the lock bar through -- just as the rats were about to catch her.

Back then this was the first time I had ever tried anything like this and I didn't know how dangerous it was or that plans don't always work out. Now I'm a lot more careful, but then I'm older and not under the curse anymore. At least I hope not. I'll talk more about that later, but there was more than just being young and foolish , there was a curse that was getting me into trouble and causing me to take risks.

Then she headed for the surface. Oh did I. I'd had enough of the sewer for a long time.

Now the magic of the ball was a sprite that had been saved a long time ago.  It was about to dissolve and the great-great-great-great-grandmother had saved it, giving it a home in a snow globe.  For a generation or two it just caught its breath and wavered.  Then it grew stronger and enjoyed the view and experience it got inside the house and travelling to a new world.

Now it was ready to get out.  So it asked for freedom.  The girl felt inspired to ask "will you hurt me if I let you out?" While the sprite hadn't thought about that, it might have frozen her solid, might not have, freezing things is just what sprites like it do. With the challenge, it made a pact not to harm her, and offered a fairy gift as well.

I got lucky that time. Since then I've learned a lot about things that are dangerous without meaning to be. Like that sprite. It would have frozen me solid just as a part of getting free, without any malice or anything but a bit of gratitude and a complete lack of attention. Magical things can be really dangerous. Don't I know that now.

I'd better be careful what I start thinking about as I'm making extra notes. I started reading these to get my mind off the mess we are in, not to remind myself about it everytime something comes up. And maybe Amber's mom and dad will find us. If they get free of the war, if anyone knows we are missing, if anyone can tell them where to look. If they can find Amber when she is in fire form. I keep thinking there is something I've forgotten, and that it has to do with getting her to come back to life, rather than just sit there as a flame, but I can't quite remember it. Anyway, I need to get back to what Amber wrote.

As she unscrewed the globe, and then screwed it back up quickly (saving a little magic for the globe to keep working as it did), a flurry of snow swept around her and two things happened.  First, she could call snow flurries to confuse or distract those who were chasing her or attacking her.  Second, the rope gained the ability to become a crystal and function as a solid -- as a spear or a staff or a bar or a sword -- and using it that way sometimes would trigger a flurry of snow.  

That is when I started using the staff I use now. It has grown a lot since it was "just" a rope, and is more of a green in color most of the time instead of blue-white with blond highlights, but there have been a lot of changes since then.

In addition, the girl became a little bonded to snow, a little far from fire, so that there would be no more fire bombs -- but she could call a cool breeze at need in the summer and didn't mind even the coldest of weather.

That doesn't really capture it. It was like I finally found my real self when I gained that connection to cold and ice. It was the neatest feeling, like coming home. Trust Amber to think of it in terms of not lighting any more fires with alcohol (and, I admit, a little bit of gasoline, I never told anyone that I took a real risk, but that is how I got a fire that really got those rat's attention). I know, she can't think of giving up fire in order to gain the whole world, but I've never felt like looking back.

This is the second adventure.  At its end the rope could be from three feet to four feet long.

And still not long enough to get in and out of a storm sewer without a ladder.  I made sure to remember that and get a better feeling for my limits after that.