I woke up in a dream one night, inside a dark, vacuous space, with nothing in sight but an infinite blackness. The only indicator of up and down was the dry, invisible floor, which my feet dragged me sluggishly along. I knew not where I was going, or why, only that I needed to get there. There was this brutal, unyielding cold, which bit clean through my skin and pierced into my bones. It sapped any energy I had, claiming my heat as its own in a futile attempt to fill the yawning void of its appetite for all things warm. Before long I was shoved onto my hands and knees by this oppressive atmosphere, crawling desperately towards a goal I couldn’t see. When the cold sucked all strength from my legs, down on my chest I went. Not long from then were my arms also depleted of vitality. It was there, in this endless chasm, that I lay motionless, ready to submit to the frost. However, before it could claim me, a man appeared before me.

At least, his voice was that of a man’s. Nothing else about him could possibly suggest this. He had no defined body, just a luminescent, formless mass of white light, which roiled and shifted into many different forms. Something in my mind gave a faint impression of familiarity, though I couldn’t place where I’d seen him before. In the split second after I first saw him, he took on the form of my father, a childhood friend, a more recent friend, and a stranger I talked to once and rarely saw again. He spoke with every voice I’d ever heard, and yet there was also a bassy undertone I was certain had never graced my ears. The first thing he asked me was, “Aren’t you cold, traveler? Where is your fire?”

Though I still couldn’t move, the man’s words seemed to revitalize my speech. My vocal cords unfroze, new breath filled my lungs, and my voice rang true and clear as I questioned him back. “There is fire, here?” I asked. “How could such warmth and comfort be possible in such a frigid vacuum?” To my mind, any flame would surely be stifled by the endless dark, and smothered by the universal chill. Heat did not belong here.

“Why quite easily!” Exclaimed the man, as he let out a hearty chuckle in hundreds of voices. “Fire can exist anywhere, as long as you have all three ingredients essential to its creation. You need fuel, oxygen, and something to ignite it.”

“How am I to find these things in this barren waste?!” I raised my voice, incredulous. “I see nought but blackness for this entire expanse. Where am I going to find wood, or flint, or even the air that gives life to flame?”

“Ah, ‘tis a vicious cycle,” the man sighed. “You can’t see what you need to make fire, because you have none.” However, the man’s resolve was not shaken, and he smiled at me with every face I’d ever known. “But that’s why I’m here, inside your head. My job is to remind you how to make fire.”

He bent down and slid his hands underneath my shoulders, hauling me into a sitting position. Criss-cross on the unseen ground, the man seated himself in front of me and stared at me with thousands of eyes. “Let us start with the easiest material: oxygen. Could you please breathe in for me?”

I did as instructed. Dragging in a long, sucking breath, the air was colder than ever. My saliva froze into pointed crystals that jabbed at the soft flesh of my cheeks. Sharp needles formed in my lungs, punching holes in my chest and jutting out like spines on a porcupine. The pain both excruciating and unimaginable wracked me, as the icicles punctured my heart, my ribs, and my liver, skewering my entire being on their frozen tips. Yet despite the agony, I retained my air. It stayed firm in the pit of my core, like it was all that kept me alive. What seemed an eternity passed before the man, diligently observing me, commanded, “Now exhale.”

Sweet relief. The ice in my chest and mouth melted, as a warmth I thought I had never known washed over my entire being. Steam escaped from my lips as I let out the longest sigh of my life. The new heat restored my body, and I realized I could wiggle my toes once more. Motion was mine again. Entropy would not claim me yet. Standing on my own two feet once again, a question prodded me. Was breathing always so painful? I asked the man..

“That’s what happens when you don’t breathe for years. Breathing clears everything out; cleanses you, and leaves room for the oxygen you will need to make fire once more.”

This made no sense. “But I have been breathing. I always am. Else I wouldn’t be alive.”

The man frowned a thousand frowns and retorted, “Yet you have no fire.” He stood up and placed many hands on my shoulder. “Regardless,” he started, “You’ve remembered that air, and by extension, oxygen, is everywhere. Thus, fire can also exist everywhere.”

Taking three steps back from me, each leg shifting into five different forms between steps, the man regarded me once more. “Now we need to find fuel.”

This would be the most difficult part by far. Nothing existed in this space but for an invisible floor and the air that sustained me. There was no wood, nothing to light. Expressing my discontent, I mentioned with all-due snark, “Well, I don’t see anything around here to burn.”

“That’s fine,” the man replied.” Because you won’t be doing the finding. They will.”

At that moment, the man split into multiple different copies of himself. I couldn’t get an accurate count, but I do know that all the new clones solidified instantly into a single form. Each looked like a friend or loved one. Among them were my parents, old friends, new friends, teachers, mentors, and others in the crowd that I couldn’t quite make out. There must have been close to a hundred, maybe more. One after another, each turned their back and faced outward from where I stood. Each took slow, deliberate steps as they walked away, disappearing into the blackness until out of sight. Anxiety creeped in.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Where are they going?” I asked the man.

“They are going to find the fuel for your fire.”

“But I didn’t ask any of them to.”

“That’s the exceptional part.” The man smirked at me with noticeably less faces than before, “You don’t need to. They do it of their own volition.”

“Why?”

Before I could get an answer, my parents returned. Each one held a pile of dry, split logs against their chest that rose to the top of their head. They said nothing as they laid their gifts down at my feet, merely smiled at me with enough kindness and love to momentarily cut through the endless cold, warming my cheeks and my eyes. They both then turned, and rejoined the man’s mass, combining again with the chorus of voices that now matter-of-factly stated, “That’s why.”

Lifting a hand to my cheek, I realized that I was crying. Even more miraculously, the tears slid smoothly down my cheeks, instead of freezing to them as was expected from these temperatures. I didn’t sob, or heave, but my eyes wouldn’t stop leaking as more and more people came to me with logs, and sticks, and kindling, and twigs. Higher and higher the pile grew as more and more came back from the unseen with rich firewood. Some gave more, some less, but everyone contributed. The pile kept growing larger and larger, until it was roughly five feet tall and wide. It was sure to be an incredible blaze once it caught. This led to the last issue. After the last clone had rejoined the man, I asked, “Now how are we going to light it?”

Each of the man’s faces grew solemn as he turned to look me in the eye and sighed, “That will be my job. But first,” as he closed the distance between us, “A word of caution. This is the last time I can help you.”

Done with being confused, I demanded of the man, “For the first time since we’ve met, could you please just say what you mean?”

“What I mean,” the man raised his voices, “Is that this isn’t the first time this has happened. You have been lost before, and without fire. Through each time I have helped you, and yet you have always forgotten the lessons you learned here, thanks to the ephemeral nature of dreams.”

My brow furrowed in failed understanding as the man continued, “ With all these attempts to give you a flame that will stay, this last step diminishes me more and more. I have only enough strength to light this last fire, but in exchange I have ensured that you will remember your time here.”

Holding both my shoulders, he concluded, “Before I do so, however, you must promise me that you will take care of this fire on your journey, and that you will not allow it to extinguish. Will you abide me?”

Looking deep into the pleading faces of everyone I’d ever known, I hesitated for an instant, before affirming, “I will.”

The man’s form immediately grew brighter and brighter, his edges becoming fuzzier as he began to disperse. It was then that it occurred to me that I had never learned his name.

“Wait!” I shouted, “I have a question!”

With the man turning his attention to me once more I asked him “Who are you?”

Hiding a small laugh under his breath, he jokingly shot back “Who do you think I am?”

I thought of who this powerful entity could be. Someone willing to help me in such a dark and empty place. Someone who would help me and ask for nothing in return, who had always been helping me. Such unerring kindness couldn’t possibly come from something mortal. I yelled my guess with a voice consumed by surprise, “God!?”

Laughter rang in the hollow pit as the man, seconds from disappearing, returned, “Close, but I am something even more powerful.”

His form shifted one more time, into a visage that I recognized instantly. A person I had always known, and yet had never felt like more of a stranger. Someone who I knew I should love, yet had always neglected. The simultaneously kindest and vilest person I’ve ever seen. My eyes went wide.

We both said, “I am you.”

With that, he dispersed completely into the black, leaving behind only a single, glowing orange ember that drifted lazily through the air. Instinctually, I reached out and clasped it in my hands, where a heavenly heat shot up through my arms and into my being. I basked in the comfort for an instant before, carefully, I placed the ember onto the stack of wood, where I blew on it until a tiny flame appeared. Slowly, gradually, the fire consumed more and more of my loved ones’ fuel, as heat began to return to the world. The flame grew and grew, before a towering inferno erupted before me, a beacon of light and heat that revealed my surroundings again.

I stood in a clearing of an immense forest. The nighttime sky hung over me live a veil, punctured only by the occasional star or planet. Trees stood dense and tall in every direction. There was sound once more, the crackling of the wood, and the dull hum of wildlife all around. I looked once more into the dancing ribbons of crimson-gold light, only to find that the fire was gaining a will of its own.

The flames rushed for me. Instinctually, I curled on myself, braced for the burning agony soon to come, and yet it never did. Instead, a gentle coziness, like I was wrapped in layers of blankets on the coldest winter night, enveloped me. It was all my family hugging me at once, the pleasant breeze on a summer day spent with my friends, and the heat on my face after I had finished bawling my eyes out at a moving work of art. Comfort and bliss like I had never known, so that when the flames withdrew, there was a faint pang of heartbreak.

The fire gifted me memories as well. Of each time I had lost my fire. Each time before now, it was the same. Every time the man would help me, and every time I’d eventually lose it somehow, leaving me to require his help once more. Now that I could look back, he had been getting duller and dimmer every time I needed his help. I wasn’t sure if I could make things different this time, but I would have to. For my own sake.

Sitting down and warming my hands at the blaze, I knew somehow that I would eventually have to keep walking. But now I knew I would be fine, because I had a fire of my own to stay warm.

After lighting a branch I kept to my side, looking out onto the path towards my unseen destination, I woke again, back in my bed.

Sitting up, the clock read 3 A.M. I still had plenty of time to sleep. But something was odd. Even without my blankets, and despite the winter weather and lack of heating in my room, I still felt warm.