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The flames swarmed hotter, heating the air and crackling with impatience. Rain plopped sporadically into the fire with sharp hisses.
“Eat,” he whispered.
The fire roared.
My skin tingled.
With my eyes closed, my other senses exploded with awareness. The subtle shifts of Solin beside me as he raised his free hand and ate his portion of the root. His hitched breath as he chewed. The gurgle of his stomach as he swallowed.
“Eat,” he snarled.
I jumped and brought the root to my mouth.
My nose wrinkled at the noxious taste. My tongue swelled with its biting poison, and my throat closed as I swallowed its burning, briny flavour. My teeth chewed for far longer than normal, crushing the stringy root, pulverising the filaments until I swallowed the final mouthful.
Breathing became harder.
My lungs disconnected from air.
My face went numb as poison slipped into my belly and spread lethally through my system.
A headache bloomed as I went dizzy.
Solin continued to hum.
With his other fist, he drummed his chest in time with my slowing, sluggish heartbeats. The thrumming and humming took on its own existence, throbbing in my ears, thundering around my skull.
It made my blood boil and bones melt.
It made my spirit claw at the imprisonment of form, and I jerked as the world suddenly spun and blurred. Fragmented memories smeared over my mind, rich with colour and dense with history.
Stars soared through a gossamer veil.
Galaxies rivered across the sky, leaving a wake of dust and moonlight.
Grasslands grew and rotted.
Mountains soared and ravines scratched into existence as the earth rumbled and tore.
Animals with wings made of night and scales as hard as stone. Beasts with wind for breath and seas for tails. Creatures that could breathe fire crawled from the dirt and murky lakes.
It all spiralled into one.
A funnel of befores and afters, presents and pasts, truths and fables.
And I was sucked up with it.
The fire reached out and burned me.
I screamed as its searing, smoking power shot down my throat, stopped my heart, and yanked out the part of me that wasn’t mortal.
I flew up, up, up into blistering heat.
Solin’s touch loosened around mine.
And together, our discarded, unbreathing bodies crashed backward onto the furs.
* * * * *
I blinked in an entirely different world.
It was so bright here.
So bright and russet golden.
An orange glow blazed over my vision, pouring upward to the sky, flowing the wrong way, swimming and swaying like upside-down rivers and twisted-out trees.
Gasping, I fell to my knees.
Or at least... fire-given knees.
The form I inhabited wasn’t the one I’d left behind. That one was fashioned with muscle and sinew. This one was entirely made up of fire. Tendrils of flames licked over the red-hot core of my burning arm. My legs gleamed almost white, mimicking the heat found at the heart of a flame.
My fingers sparked and hissed as I stroked my cheek, feeling nothing but liquid power, ignited and burning.
My breath came short, my exhale pure steam and my inhale pulling smoke into my fiery lungs. All around me, the world was on fire. The sky was awash with it, the clouds pulsing with oranges, reds, and yellows. The grass swaying around me were tiny tendrils of flickering flames, while smoke-winged birds snatched at ripe sizzling seeds before flitting into the churning sky.
A blazing lynx ran past with cinders for fur.
A hawk swirled above, its feathers raining soot and embers.
Climbing to my feet, I stepped forward, kicking up another waft of smoke and sending a spray of glowing ash into the air. “Step with us, not against us,” a smouldering voice fumed in my head. “For you are us, and we are you.”
I screamed.
A plume of fire poured from my throat.
I shifted to run.
To return to a world that made sense.
But a hand lashed tight around mine, bringing me up short. “Breathe, Girl. I’m with you.”
Gasping for air untainted by fire, I locked onto Solin.
Or at least...I hoped it was Solin.
Gone was his long black hair and ebony skin. Here, he was as golden as me. As glowing and as merciless as the endless burning fire in the Nhil camp. His eyes danced with orange. His teeth flickered with yellow. His skin carried every ember and cinder that the creatures around us did.
“You’re safe,” he murmured. “Just trust and give yourself over to the fire. It has kindly given us form while we have no form to inhabit.”
My nostrils flared as I looked at where he touched me. How his fingers wavered with flames, blending with my fiery hand. We were just two pillars of a fire, given shape while still belonging to the whole.
I tried to find comfort in that.
To trust that Solin had walked over these fields of flame before and knew how to navigate such a maddening world. Forcing myself to inhale, I shivered as his fingers linked tighter with my coal-glowing palm.
