The next morning I awake, excited, yet also nervous about my experience with fire yesterday. I don’t think it was just my imagination: I’m not that creative. To be able to imagine fire licking at my skin is probably beyond my scope. Maybe I should speak to Kalanthia? It’s not ‘feeling the earth’, but perhaps she’d have some guidance even so?

Kalanthia? Are you awake? I try to ‘project’. I suspect that if I get up, I’ll disturb all of my still-sleeping Bound, so if the massive nunda doesn’t respond, I’ll have to do something else. Since it’s still dark, I’m limited in what I can do, but I’m too awake to go back to sleep.

Fortunately, it appears that my landlady-friend has similar hours to mine. Or she’s easily roused. Either way, she responds to me quite quickly.

Yes, Markus Wolfe. I am awake.

OK, great. I was hoping you could help me a little here?

Perhaps, she responds with a hint of curious amusement. What is your question?

Last night I didn’t feel the earth…but I think I felt fire, I tell her, then explain exactly what happened. When I’m done, she is silent for a long while, but somehow, despite not actually having a Bond with her or even being in the same room, I sense it is a thoughtful silence rather than a rejecting one. Perhaps she projected the emotion to me as much as she projects her thoughts, so I would know she was thinking about it.

I am not familiar with fire, Kalanthia says finally, thoughtfully. My mate controls lightning, which perhaps is closer to it than earth, but I cannot ask him for advice: he is too far away. My own experience with earth was that I felt it under my paws, felt its firmness, felt its steadiness, felt its endurance. Those seeped into my own veins, giving me patience and endurance for the trials I had to face, and eventually helped me wait for the opportunity to escape my captors.

However, whether that is a good approach to take with fire, I know not. Inviting fire to fill your veins seems a risky proposition since it burns indiscriminately. Earth has never hurt me, not even when I made mistakes. I have hurt myself by reaching for more than I can manage, creating a mana debt which pained me to repay. Yet the earth has always simply been…there. Unyielding, and comforting in that steadfastness. I suspect that fire will be a very different character.

She is silent for a little longer, but I sense that she has more to say and keep from interrupting. You will have to find your own path through this unknown battleground. I suggest that you study fire, that you observe how it functions with as many senses as you can. I do not command the earth; I request it cooperate with me, feeding it mana and visualising the images I wish it to take. Perhaps fire will be the same; perhaps it will be different.

I wish I could offer more help, she finishes, sounding a little sad at her lack of insight to offer, but truly my mate would be of more use here.

It’s fine, I say, trying to project my own feelings of appreciation. Already you’ve helped me get further than I would have on my own. Perhaps I’m more suited to fire than earth, I finish.

Perhaps, she agrees. Good luck, Markus Wolfe. With that, the sense of her presence withdraws, the conversation clearly done for now. Not that I mind – since it was a perfect time to get information from Kalanthia, I wanted to do so. Now that she doesn’t seem to have any more guidance to offer, I’d rather get stuck in and try to work things out myself than keep on chatting.

So, I need to observe the fire with as many senses as possible. Sliding quietly from the bed, I manage to shift closer to the glowing embers in the fireplace without disturbing anyone. Well, Bastet opened an eye as I got close, but seeing that it was just me, she closed it again.

I can’t help reaching over to rub at her neck, stroking the proto-feathers behind her ears. A sense of sleepy contentment comes over the Bond to me and I continue doing it for a few more minutes while I quickly chew on some meat and a cooked potato to ease the growling of my stomach. Then I remind myself that, as pleasurable as stroking Bastet is for both of us, I have another task to do.

The fire is burning very low, the hours without any new fuel being added meaning that it has mostly consumed the branches which had been on there. The heat being put off by the glowing embers is limited, and mostly only detectable when I put my hand above them. As I blow, I see the white ash dance into the air, and the red glow brightening a little.

The fire triangle, I think to myself, remembering back to GCSEs at the tender age of sixteen. Fuel, oxygen, and heat. The coals still had the heat, and still had the fuel, though not too much of it. Add a bit more oxygen and suddenly the fire perks up.

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Curious, I slip into my meditation, suddenly viewing the fire through different eyes. It’s still as bright as with my normal vision, but this time it’s bright because of the number of connections between it and the environment. It’s actually difficult to differentiate the fire from the connections. Maybe fire is more connection than substance? I wonder even as I try to make sense of it.

The fire has worms of connection that pierce the fuel around it, and feed particularly hungrily from the surface. There are also filament-thin connections which wave in the air, sucking heavily to ensure that it continues to draw sufficient oxygen for its needs. At the same time, these connections output heat as well as drawing in air.

Leaning forwards, I fight to remain viewing the world through this other set of eyes while I blow. I’m not disappointed in my discoveries. The connections brighten, a set of filaments weaving wildly in the air towards me, drawing the oxygen down into the body of the fire. The fire itself expands a little, the network of links chewing hungrily at the coals increasing their activity until the glut of oxygen has been consumed.

It’s strange to ascribe emotion to something as much of a force of nature as fire, but I can’t help but do so. It is hungry: hungry for oxygen, hungry for fuel. Its nature is to consume and it appears to wish to do that as quickly as possible. It doesn’t care that the brighter it burns, the quicker it will flash towards its end.

I remember a verse which always stuck with me, though I cannot remember its author. My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night. But oh my friends and ah my foes, it gives a lovely light.

Fire knows nothing of conservation of resources, or endurance, or planning for the future. It is all about the present; the enjoyment of the now. What does that say about me, I wonder, if I’m drawn more to this than to the patient steadfastness of the earth?

Then again, fire is steadfast in its own way. While there remains oxygen, fuel, and heat, it will continue burning. It is not like the wind which blows in gusts and might change its mind at any moment to blow in a different direction, or not blow at all. Fire does one thing alone, but that it does excellently.

It will always do its best, will continue attempting to burn something until either it succeeds or is extinguished. And then, a fire which is almost, but not quite extinguished, may see a resurgence when the conditions are right. One must only consider how difficult firefighters have to work to put out a wildfire or house fire to realise how stubbornly determined fire can be too, even to its own detriment. That, I can identify with. I’m a stubborn ass sometimes, even when I shouldn't be; even when it brings me trouble.

Fire is both creation and destruction. It burns everything it can to ash, but so often that ash offers benefits to others. It helps me in my attempts to create soap, for example. The fertile ash left in the wake of a wildfire in a forest also offers greater growth to the survivors. Fire is a natural part of the cycle of life, though it’s one that may offer great pain and loss in the short term. I have burned so many bridges in my life, and the process has been painful. Yet in the wake of the inferno, sometimes I’ve found a path which has offered a new beginning.

With these thoughts in mind, I reach carefully out to the fire in front of me. Kalanthia’s words about fire burning indiscriminately drift through my mind, but I don’t know how else to start. If I burn myself, I can heal.

I don’t plunge my hand into the embers despite knowing that whatever burns I would gain would easily be healable. Instead, I lower my hand until the heat is on the uncomfortable side of too hot. I watch the way the connections originating from the fire wrap themselves around my fingers, and try to feed from the surface of my hand.

How do I move from the fire trying to consume me to obeying me? I question as I tilt my hand this way and that, watching how the connections are always densest on the part of my hand closest to the embers. Lowering my hand a little more, I wince slightly as it starts to burn, the connections thickening and multiplying the closer I get. Lifting my hand a little, I move back into the slightly-uncomfortable-but-not-burning range.

Remembering back to what Kalanthia had said about how she controlled the earth, I have an idea. She mentioned offering the earth mana and visualising what she wanted. Perhaps I should try that.

Of course, that requires somehow making my mana leave my body, something else which I wanted to experiment with today. Pulling my hand out of the fire, I decide that I might as well heal the surface burns I’ve given myself in my exploration. My natural health regeneration will probably clear them up in ten minutes or so, but I need all the practice I can get with Flesh-Shaping.

With my practice yesterday, the burns are healed within a couple of minutes, two beads of mana being controlled to cover sufficient area to heal the whole surface of my hand in one go. Progress.

Now, how can I practise pulling the mana actually outside my body, and control it? The only experience I’ve had recently where mana left my body and I followed it took me into Fenrir’s head while he was out hunting – not what I’m aiming for.

Pulling myself out of meditation, I look around to see that faint hints of daylight are entering the cave and my Bound have mostly woken during my experimentation. I must have been in that state for longer than I realised.

Fenrir has already left the cave; the sounds of chewing and snapping coming from outside indicate that he has found one of the carcasses left out there and is having breakfast. Bastet is still next to me, pressed against my leg. She’s awake, but the cubs are not yet. Sirocco isn’t in the cave anymore, though I don’t know where she is. Finally, River is sitting on the bed, watching me curiously.

What were you doing? he asks, obviously interested.