Fire Starter

"Walk into the fire with all your fears of being burned and shedding tears. Walk into the fire with eyes open wide. Don't try to run away, Don't try to hide. Feel the intense heat, feel your body sweat. Expose the fears you know and the ones you haven't met. Let your shield melt in the fire's blazing flames. You no longer have to hide or be a prisoner to shame. Walk into the fire in your state of being weak. Let the fire subdue you, let it be your defeat. Let the old flesh burn away. Let the smoke rise in the air. Let your apathy dissipate, let your heart start to care"

We rode a few ahns away from the harigga in an eerie silence. I pondered during the time what could be of such importance that Orahjinn would come to me this way and still there needled in the back of my head that concept Caleb had talked about .. suspended weightlessness of the mind. The need to let go .. to find peace and rest. Not a rest so much of the body but of the spirit.
I wanted that.

I needed that.

I yearned for it like nothing I had ever wanted before.

Then we stopped in a barren strip of a rain run off and my mentor was already dismounting. It brought my thoughts back to here and now to turn in the saddle and look at him. 'What is so important that you needed me?'

'Start a fire.'

It was a warm night but the temperature often drops a little during the later ahns even on the hottest eves. Fishing through my saddle bag I found a few chips to stack together. Perhaps once we settled in around the fire, he would tell me what he had on his mind. I tried to hide the shaking of my hands as I sparked the flint against the dung. As the first of the flame began the breeze whispered against the flicker softly extinquishing it.

'Start a fire, Mezoo.'

The tremble almost skittered the flint striker from my fingers. I was trying if he would just have patience with me. Couldn't he see that? Again and again the wind blew the flame out until I sat back becoming irritated. I tried over and over again until the frustration quivered the lower part of my lip to mirror the shaking of my hands.

'Even a novice can do it, Mezoo. Start a fire.'

A mantra began on the silence of my tongue, screaming on the quiet of the wind that continued to defy my progress. Why are you doing this to me? What do you want? The chips crumbled to dust and the wind whisked them away in a breath of air. I was growing angry and threw the flint on the ground trying to give up.

'Do it .. do it now!'

The span of my fingers wide at the circle and the force of ire cast shards of spark into the night but it fizzed and piffed as if it mocked me the same way Orahjinn seemed to. I sent a dotted line of miniature flame warriors dancing across the ground toward him circling with a battle cry threatening to engulf his boots and legs. One breath blew them into a stillness and they dissapated in tiny wisps.

'Is that all you have .. is it all you can do?'

His taunt fueled a fury, his chides piqued the very core of my rage. A flashpoint split the plains and I brought the wall of fire with me, stepping from it livid with a fire in my eyes to match it all. I would raze him from the prairie and be done with this game.

'What do you want from me??'

'Is this what it felt like when you set the plains on fire?'

The night went silent and the flames vanished in an instant. I blinked away the sting of tears. I blinked at how cold and callous he seemed to appear at this moment, how nonchalantly he had rent me open and spilled every ugly secret I kept so carefully tucked away onto the ground and watched it seep into the fissures.

Was there any voice to carry to him in the whisper of breath I gave him?

'No.'

'Think. This is what it feels like. This is what it takes from you Mezoo. It is this much effort that comes from the depth of your anger to create such a holocaust and still ... this is nothing by comparison to the flames that drenched the harigga.'

The dawning was slowly beginning to sink inside the pain ... the anger .. the confusion. I had not set the fire. I had not started the flames that had taken such toll on our people. I felt myself crumpling and the strong arms that caught and held me while I emptied my soul in a spill of tears to cleanse away the sorrow. A guilt that I could no longer claim as my own was leaving and with it all of the strength that it had offered to keep me going. The self hatred, the loathe fading while he rested his cheek against my hair.

When I could breathe once again without the hitch of agonizing sobs I asked him softly .. why .. why did he do this to me ... what did he want from me?

He spoke low against my ear so that I would know the importance of his words and feel the meaning of them in places beyond my mind ... he touched my soul when he said simply ...

'Where I need you to go .. you can carry no doubts.'