Nilfrem remembered the bright airport lights and the feeling of his backpack's straps pressing on one palms. His other hand was on his uncle, terrified of getting lost in the sea of bodies swarming the departure gates.
His uncle's huge frame pushed through the crowds, that round mask strapped to his face. Nilfrem kind of wished he had one too. His uncle had offered to swap masks, but the N95 respirator looked too bulky and uncomfortable for Nilfrem's little face.
His uncle explained that the airport’s air quality isn’t good. Nilfrem could smell the faint fumes sometimes. Nilfrem didn’t care because he was a child. He just thought the fan in the N95 respirator looked very high-tech and made his uncle look strong like a hero.
"You'll see your mama and papa soon," his uncle's muffled voice promised, the mask making him sound like a stranger. Nilfrem could not read the unspoken words between the lines but he had a sad feeling and didn’t want to say goodbye.
Nilfrem was not sure what he did but he didn’t say goodbye to his uncle. He was feeling a mix of emotions. He'd been excited. The voices he heard on yearly phone calls, those were his parents. But also...kind of uneasy. What if they weren't as nice as he imagined?
One heart-murmuring second, he was Nilfrem, just an antsy kid who didn’t talk a lot, on his way to meet his “long-lost” parents. When his eyelids slid open, his world imploded into a spiraling vortex of flames and screaming embers.
Have you ever been startled awake in the middle of the night, your heart pounding like you just fell off a cliff? Multiply that by a million, and you'll barely be scratching the surface of the cold, writhing panic that slapped Nilfrem across his metaphorical face at that moment.
Because nothing – zero, zilch, nada – could've braced him for the sight of himself convulsing like a demented flame. Nilfrem's form thrashed in a storm of fire and sparks, a twisting amalgam of reds, oranges, and searing yellows.
For that single, frenzied moment, all he knew was that he'd been...reduced? Transformed. Something fundamental had changed. It felt like he was stripped down to the very essence and reforged into something primal and elemental.
He was surprised to discover that his body is only 3 inches tall, amorphous and made of fire, constantly flickering.
He tried to do what any other kid would - you know, scream his lungs out and wake the neighbors three streets over. But this new fiery form had no mouth, no lungs. Just an impossibly shrill screech of shooting embers, like an angry hornet's nest got doused in gasoline and blasted awake by a tiny stick of dynamite.
While his new body thrashed in that frenzied dance, flashes of memory sparked through the chaos. The flight...going to the Emperor's Land...meeting his family at last...had it all been an elaborate dream?
He was still salty about those inspectors confiscating his Helix the Cat action figure just because the bipedal plastic toy had twin gatling guns instead of paws. It's not like the little plastic weapons could do any actual damage. The gatling guns were just for show - they made cool little flashing red lights and sounds!
He had felt the unforgettable disappointment of nearly all toys, many of them were brand-new and untouched gifts his uncle bought for his departure. No matter how hard he pleaded and pouted, the inspectors were unmoved.
He was stoked to keep his awesome moose lantern whose antlers lit up and played a little tune. He still felt disgruntled for failing to heed his uncle’s advice and not hiding the toys between the layers of folded clothes.
But enough about tragic toy confiscations. He was having a bigger crisis of existence to deal with here. Like the fact that he shape-shifted into a bizarre, flickering fire spirit while his brain played back his last coherent memories like a reel of KitKot videos.
He remembered the bubbling excitement of finally arriving at his new home. The place was cozy enough, but to a child it felt delightfully spacious.
The real showstopper, though, was outside. Nilfrem the Fire Spirit had felt it first before Nilfrem the Child. It was peaceful and safe and a little odd. Different from the streets of Zantou that were sand and dune-covered and the sidewalks were burial grounds.
The pavement was squared into neat sidewalk tiles that Nilfrem took great delight in avoiding the cracks between. He spent several undignified minutes avoiding every crack, with a bad feeling that if he stepped on a crack, something terrible would happen.
Sure, it was all perfectly pleasant. Orderly, even. Still, he couldn't shake an overwhelming sense of disconnect. This new life already felt so distant, so alien. It was a stark contrast to the natural facade of his grandparents' village. It was not densely populated and impoverished like the City of Children. There was no strong sense of community like in the Central City of Zantou, where his uncle lived in a nice apartment with his short-lived pets.
He has been here for not even a day. Yet he ached to go back, even if just for a little while longer...to walk those rowdy streets one last time...to hear the familiar sounds of seafood vendors lounging in the countryside and his uncle’s motorcycle...to taste the sweet berries that his grandpa gather on their mountain walks…to feel the rush of wind through his hair as he clung to the back of his uncle's leather jacket.
The Emperor's Land felt strange and far-off, even though he stood right there, his feet firmly planted on the ground. It was like his spirit had wandered off somewhere, leaving him feeling disconnected and lost.
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Back in Zantou, the fire spirit experienced every new thought or emotion flickered through the real Nelfrim's mind, though it was like being connected through a distorted emotional signal.
The fire spirit slumped down, his fiery essence dimming as he surrendered to the undertow of melancholy. That's when he realized where he was - perched atop the eternal flame before an immense obsidian statue of a legendary fire elemental. One look at that snarling djinn head and rippling pecs was enough affirmation that he wasn't hallucinating some crazy fever dream.
The ancient inscription spiraled around him in a dizzying helical pattern: “At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another…”
Suddenly, it all made sense. Well, maybe not the flying beach ball of existential crisis, emotional whiplash, and fiery transformation. But he knew what he was now - a Fireborn, reborn from the eternal flame's ruddy spark. While his physical body continued to live its new life in the Emperor's Land, his spiritual energy had been rekindled as this...this...
He studied the hypnotic convergence of his own flickering form. Was this why the real Nelfrim had always felt so distant and out of place, even in the most peaceful place in the world?
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Night after night, Sister Rose stood before the eternal flame, studying the way it danced within the obsidian Fire Elemental's outstretched palm. The ruddy glow painted her face in a warm blush, shadows flickering across her features as if the stone djinn itself drew breath. Yet no matter how intently she gazed, the flame burned ever steady - faint, but even.
"Well, so your old friend is gone, you'll be sorry to hear," her lover murmured one evening, arms encircling her slender waist from behind.
Sister Rose stiffened. "Who?"
"The Lightbringer. The one who served at the Relief Center, delivering comfort to the internally displaced." His words were muffled against her hair.
"Is he dead?" She frowned, unable to keep the skepticism from her voice. The Lightbringer was an academic, a celebrated author renowned for his literary works documenting their people's oppression. Surely the enemy would not target such a selfless, compassionate soul.
"The Truth Tellers have retrieved his corpse themselves," her lover replied grimly. "By their own hands."
The Lightbringer...dead? Sister Rose's throat tightened as fragmented memories resurfaced. The last time they met, a pang of discomfort had colored their interaction - not from any personal strife, but simply the jarring juxtaposition of his life of privileged comfort amidst such profound lack and suffering.
He had come to present her humble temple with his latest literary achievement - a gold medal and critical acclaim for capturing the complexities in their people's plight. She remembered his haunted eyes, the guilt simmering behind them as he dwelled in the safety of his plush hillside enclave while others starved on the streets.
"They killed him over a joke," her lover spat, venom lacing his words. "A simple message on LarryBird, telling people to think critically instead of swallowing the Double Prisms' fear-mongering lies. He even tried to flee when the death threats started rolling in, but those drones tracked him to his sister's flat."
His arms tightened around her, knuckles blanching. "Nine innocents dead. An entire family obliterated by a single fireball from those remote piloted drones. All for daring to speak reason and truth."
Sister Rose felt ill. The celebrated Lightbringer, she recalled his dry humor, the warmth crinkling the corners of his eyes when he laughed. To think those eyes now stared forever at nothing, their warm light extinguished…
"It's evil," she whispered, anguish cracking her voice. "He was just an academic. Never a threat to anyone."
"The Double Prisms always find an excuse to justify their slaughter," her lover seethed, words she already knew were true. "Anyone who dares defy their tyranny is branded a 'combatant threat' to be mercilessly crushed."
His hand drifted to the locked display case, fingers brushing the gleaming literary medal encased within.
"He would have wanted you to have this. The only thing of value that remains of him."
Sister Rose felt her eyes well with tears as she cradled the medal's case against her chest. After 44 years of dedication and self-sacrifice, this golden disc, honoring his poetic achievement, was all that remained of the universally revered man.
She thought of the years of her dear Sister Dahlia who often indulged in the puffs of her beloved death stick. To Sister Dahlia, the death stick was the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It was exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
Dahlia had often said to her, “Rosebud, I am not long for this world,” and Sister Rose had thought her young sister’s words as mere idle thoughts.
Dahlia's words rang truer than Rose could have grasped. But who would bring harm to the peaceful servants in the neutral zone, a temple of peace and non-violence?
Each evening as she tended the eternal flame, Sister Rose found her lips shaping the damning word over and over - "Terrorists."
It had always sounded strangely in her ears. It never felt appropriate to call all those invaders such an ugly word, “terrorists.”
A word without forgiveness but aptly fitting because forgiveness for the enemy who killed her all those innocent lives was an impossibility.
But now it sounded to her like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled her with fear, and yet she longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.
It haunted her dreams. Each night, Sister Rose found herself walking those shattered streets, weaving through the wreckage that stretched as far as the eye could see. Smoke choked the air, embers glowing like demonic eyes in the darkness.
Yet it was the face that drew her in, pale and mournful against the backdrop of destruction. A face devoid of life, yet whispering incessantly - confessing secrets in a hushed, sibilant tongue. Rose strained to make out the words, but they slithered through her consciousness like slippery eels.
Some nights, the hollow-eyed face was her own. Other times, it bore the faces of those she had failed - parents torn from their children, loved ones ripped away without a whisper of farewell, always relentless murmuring.
On this night, she felt her soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region. The wreckage around her goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every minute was another day where hundreds more additional phantom humanoids clawed through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.
And there again she found the gray face waiting for her. It began to confess to her in a murmuring voice and she wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle when her own lips were desert chapped.
A tremulous hand extended, gesturing at the ruin surrounding them. "Look upon their deadly work, sister. This is the face of their 'peace'. It whispered, its form wavering like a guttering candle flame.
Rose flinched as if struck, the words lancing straight into her core. How many nights had she lain awake agonizing over that very word - terrorist?
So many innocents slaughtered under that twisted pretense - teachers, healers, even playful children whose only 'crime' was the unforgivable act of existence.
"They are the true terrorists," the spirit hissed, features contorting in a rictus of rage. His form began to dissipate, whispers fading into the ether.
“No more silent vigils. No more mournful prayers for deliverance that would never come.” Its final breath was her own. She felt that she too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the blame for every death in this “war”.