Winter

I know most people used to be excited about their birthdays. The day you celebrate each year and get presents but that's not what I mean. I mean the day your actually born, the day your parents name you and see you for the first time. The day your whole family is excited for.

The thing is it's changed over the years because of just one man. One simple act, now results in multiple tragedies and you never really know if you're punishing those people or the innocent. I think the innocent always suffer more than the actual guilty party. I've seen it happen. "Winter, why are you always constantly staring at the snow that you see everywhere?" My friend said bored. "I love the color white,"I said seriously.

Me and my friend January, yes January the coldest month of the year, are very different physically and in personality. I'm content with my world while she hates every single thing around her. I have sparkling icy blue eyes, pale skin and hair as white as snow while she has pale skin, brown eyes and brown hair like every other girl in this world. I guess that explains why she complains so much.

I'm stuck in this world, a world stuck in an eternal winter. A world where I shouldn't exist because I'm born in September. I should be dead but I escaped.

A few years back

I was born on the 30th of September. I know funny. The truth is any girl born in August or September is killed. My parents were quite disappointed because I was almost a lucky child but sadly, "Its all my mothers fault that I'm in this situation." It's kinda dumb to blame timing on someone.

In any case, I was still a lucky but yet very unlucky child. The man came after me the day after during October but he chased my parents really far. Imagine they ran with me to a village 100 miles away during a snow storm. It was freezing that night. So keep it in your mind October 1st, that's the night I became an orphan. At the mercy of anyone who sees a 1 day old baby lying on the snow in a white basket and also covered in multiple white blankets. I never really blamed the storm for hiding me, I blamed my parents but I still love the color white. It took days for someone to find me but I wasn't even cold and people could assume it was because of my parents care to put 5 blankets but it wasn't. I even believed that for years until they proved that impossible.

That's how I ended up with January, the ungrateful goat, but her families awesome, well her step-dad. They always thought and think my birthdays on the 1st of October, but somehow I knew it just wasn't. When they explained the stories about the man who kills, they even say he'd be called a serial killer and the way they found me nothing adds up. How could I be born on the same day my parents were running with me, at 1am?

My dad even told me to love and appreciate the parents I never knew, that gave up their lives for me, but they knew what was coming, if I were them I would've ran the moment my child was born on one of these months. I know I could make a ton of excuses for them too but I'm not that kind of person, I can't find excuses for someone's dumb actions.

I remember how much fun I had as a child, I would play in the snow and love every bit of it while all the other children including January would stare at me. Now I understand why this guy wants these kids dead they are all stuck-up.

I knew one thing for sure, I was different and I'm talking about every single bit of me was unlike any of these children. Even when I went to school I would outrank all of them, that I actually finished school in the first 2-4 years or less, I mean its been a while. I never really was close to January. The months I dreaded most was when it was September or August and I heard a baby cry but I never heard it the next day. Just knowing that he was so close put ice in my veins. I dread these months every year.

Present day

Every year, January's parents used to celebrate her birthday but every year I refuse for my dad to celebrate mine because it always on October 1st which takes me back every-time to something nasty, something I don't wanna remember but I do every time. I remember how we ran and how my parents died, how I was stuck in the snow for days.

It's not nice to celebrate something that isn't happy. So eventually they stopped celebrating hers too because every time it was her birthday I would cry and imagine, what it would've been like if I was born a day later? I wouldn't be on the run my whole life. I wouldn't have to live with people and destroy their happy lives. That's all I've ever done to them because every time it was something happy, I'd make it sad unless it had to do with snow which they all hated, except my dad. I don't know why they can't be happy with something so beautiful.

I think if only those people didn't hurt this man by killing his daughter who was born on the last day of August and 2 years later on the 1st of September she was killed. Sadly that's what caused almost a million girls to die during these months. I don't know why he feels that if he can't have his daughter then no one should. Ember was her name, I think he named her that because he wanted her to be unique. Almost all girls are named after the winter wasteland we live in but she, she wasn't, instead she was named after something warm and welcoming.

What could make her so unique that people wanted her dead? Why the name Ember for a young girl born in an eternal winter? Was it because she was the future? Someone to bring light into this world? Or just a hope that he had just for himself? And why'd he never come back for me?