During her first year as Jerald's captive, Giselle thrashed and squawked and lashed out. Her blood boiled, in both a literal and figurative sense. During her second year, she flared up around Jerald whenever she received the chance to and hurled creative sequences of threats, curses, and profanities in his way. During her third year, she fumed with anger and moped around in her cage.

     During her fourth year, she learned to stop. She learned to stop fighting throughout the next three years that came after that. She refused to host her boisterous tantrums anymore, it was all futile.

     Jerald didn't torment her or anything of the like. Instead, he treated her like his personal lantern. He only kept her around because he needed a light and heat source better than candles and firewood. He supplied her with the basic necessities (though bland, they were still necessary) and she learned to keep to herself and accept her fate as a prisoner. Her willpower diminished from time's work, leaving her to be an empty shell of who she used to be. She used to be a queen who would bask in all her infamous glory. She used to be a queen who would strike fear within the hearts of her people. She used to be a queen who would stride the red carpet with a flair of evil.

     Now she was nothing but a bird sealed away from the world.

     "Careful to not touch anything like last time," Jerald warned, tossing a glimpse over at his new apprentice, Lucas, behind his shoulders. Throughout the seven years that Giselle had been trapped inside of Jerald's dingy basement, her captor had gained a pupil whose desire was to acquire the arts of magic manipulation.

    Lucas bobbed his head back and forth in a nod. "Yes, sir."

     "Actually, never mind what I said before." Jerald left to rummage through the contents of his shelves. He came back with a lumpy sack of sunflower seeds. "Go feed my bird," he ordered, shooing his apprentice with a flick of his hand. "She'll whine if she's hungry, and I don't want that." If Giselle was capable of rolling her eyes, she would.

     "Yes, sir." Lucas seized the sack of sunflower seeds and, with hesitation, approached Giselle's jail cell.

     After fishing out several seeds, he quickly deposited them through the cage bars. He always feared her branding him with burns, and she often attempted to for a fun scare. It was the only amusement she had nowadays. She once marked a nasty scar on his wrist and made him howl like a dying rooster. It was still here to this day, and it now served as a constant reminder of what she had done to him.

     Snap.

     Giselle was a millisecond away from chomping on withdrawn fingertips. She shrank back in the shadows, eyeing Lucas with a hardened gaze.

     "You're a mean bird," he muttered.

     "She used to be quite a mean queen as well," Jerald said.

     "Silence, fool," Giselle hushed.

     "What do you mean by that?" Lucas asked Jerald, his curiosity piqued.

     "You're looking at Queen Giselle, the tyrannical ruler that went missing seven years ago."

     "Trusting you was the mistake that ended my life," she spat. "I say that statement literally. It has literally been the mistake that has ended my human life." Her reddish orange feathers were fazed with a flare that lasted a pitiful duration of two seconds.

     "Not really. I could've let you rot all those years ago, leaving you to starve for eternity, but I didn't." Giselle didn't say anything to go against Jerald's point. Knowing this, he didn't wait for an answer. "And that's how the phoenix came to be."

     "Oh." Lucas' eyebrows skyrocketed. "Wow. You've been keeping her prisoner in here ever since?"

     "Let's not word that to make it seem like I'm the bad guy here."

     "Yet you are," Giselle protested, her voice flat.

     Jerald rolled his eyes. "Shut your beak. You weren't such a great ruler in the first place, I've done your people good. People rejoiced in your disappearance."

     After a pause, Lucas set the sack of sunflower seeds away. "Sir, may I interest you with a potion that I've learned to create from you? It's the invisibility spell that you taught me to make last night." He whipped out a thin tube. It was a small container that held a clear liquid inside. Before Jerald could reach out to examine the concoction, Lucas raised it high, out of reach.

     And then he smashed it into the ground.

     Immediately, as soon as the shatter cued, an explosion of pink smoke diffused across the entire basement. Startled, Giselle let out an earsplitting caw. She heard Jerald hack out hideous coughs, then his voice morphed into dead silence. Her cage danced, stirring an earthquake, plunging her in dizzy spells.

     Another jerk to the side caused for her to stumble and fall on her own talons. As she was tossed around right and left, the pink smoke that had been suffocating her faded out. Her vision blurred and zoomed out to race past dark green blobs and sticks of brown. The air wheezing out of her lungs was replaced with a different kind - a more refreshing kind of air that she hadn't experienced in years.

     As she clung against the cage bars, her head tilted up and she gazed out into a vast multicolored pool composed of red, orange, and pink hues. A bright ball of golden light was sinking beneath the world.

     The horizon.

     This was the sky. She was outside. She was actually outside-

     Then, a voice spoke up.

     "I couldn't take it anymore."

     It was Lucas' voice.

     He had been her savior, much to her astonishment. He set the cage down on the grass, his fingers loose around the handle of it.

     As Giselle glanced up, he stared down back at her. "Jerald wasn't just any wizard. He was a dangerous one. It had been too late for me to realize that." A frown creased his face. "I've placed him in an unconscious state with that magical smoke. If anyone breathed that stuff in for longer than ten minutes, they'll would be out for an hour. It's a dark magic that I've learned from him, yet I've used that same magic against him."

     "Why have you saved me when I've been so cruel to you?" Giselle questioned. "I once burned your hand on purpose."

     "Because no one, not even someone like you, deserves to be locked up for so long, let alone be taken away from everything you once had." Lucas lowered down to her level. After a moment of inspection, he fiddled with the lock. It clicked open, a sound that echoed relief.

     The door flew open, and then she set flight. After escaping her prison, Giselle flapped her golden and crimson wings. She soared the air, maintaining small and simple flight. "Why-"

     "Go," Lucas commanded, as if it hurt to watch her do so. He offered her a smile. "Be free."

     "I owe you the debt of a lifetime." Giselle emphasized her note of gratitude. His kind words would be embedded in her head, like a significant memory cherished from now to as long as she lived. With another practiced flap of her bright wings, she plunged into the sky for the first time in her life.

     Freedom had never tasted so sweet.

     "I will come back to repay you for everything," Giselle promised, her words delivered through a steady echo from above.

     Lucas beamed. "Then I wish you the best of luck. May we cross paths again!"

     Giselle's body glowed with an emotion she hadn't truly indulged in for a long while. Joy. A geyser of fire erupted from her feathers and back, outlining her with festive sparks. She hurled herself into the late afternoon sky, allowing for a gust of wind to guide her flaming wings elsewhere.

     She would finally be able to take on the world, and she was ready to do it with a fresh start.