It’s been raining acid for three hours when Sira realizes she has magic. The realization worms its way through the back of her mind, like a loose tooth her thoughts just worried free.

The acid rain hisses as it eats at the village’s stone houses, and the angels’ thunderous trumpets rock the earth, and Sira has magic.

She steps out of her house. There’s a pause, like the deadly rain doesn’t quite know what to do with a silly girl shoved all haphazardly into the wrong body, and then an angel turns its flaming sword to point at her. Sira laughs, wings unfurling from her back, catches a stray lightning bolt, and launches herself at the angel.

Her body continues to rearrange itself as she gains altitude. The angel’s stone face twists hideously as it snarls, “Heretic.”

“Oh, I haven’t even started,” Sira says, and her lightning is a sword, and her eyes burn as the world crystallizes, and her nails grow into talons. She bares her teeth, swings her blade, and the world shatters before her.

The angel warps, glittering fragments spinning into each other, but Sira is relentless, is the very antithesis of a creature bound to the wills of the gods.

The angel falls to earth in crumbling pieces, the rain clears, and Sira hears clapping behind her.