A Deadly Bite

45 || Death And Heroes

'A single spark' must be a common Tía phrase, for Fiesi wasn't the first to speak those words to me. The memory hits me at this moment, a flickering arrow dug into my heart, as the heated fleck of my flame falls.

They fade in as mist around me. A tree supporting my back. My mother's shadow cast over me as she leans, arm looped with a low-hanging branch, smiling laugh just out of view. My father's face fills the spots of sunshine. The olive hue of his skin appears washed-out, greyed, like he was real before and is now only a mirror's echo, a reanimation of ashes.

His eyes, however, remain their bright purple form, however warped they might be behind his glinting spectacles. Right before my nose, a flame dances. His, not mine.

"By its nature," he says, his voice soft as leaves on the wind, "a Tía's flame does not burn. It exists as a raw form of power, meant to shield and create peace. You will strive to be peaceful, Noli?"

I nod eagerly, chin bobbing up and down. "Like, be nice?"

When he smiles, a crinkle forms in the corners of his eyes, lifting them so that cheer glimmers within their endless flames. "Exactly. Be as nice as you can possibly be."

"But not too nice," my mother chips in. I glance up to see her arms crossed, her head tilted in that mischievous way that makes me giggle. "Too nice makes you a wimp."

She shrugs to finish her words; my father is glaring at her already. When I grasp his gaze, though, it softens again, viewed through the growing haze of the violet flame balanced atop his finger. "Nice will do perfectly for now," he says. "Now, as I was attempting to teach, flame is made for peace, but that doesn't mean it hasn't the capability to harm. Quite the opposite, actually. When circumstances deem it necessary, we only need a single spark to start a blaze."

I see it hop upward from his lit fingertip, a smouldering flake of purple that refuses to fade as it drifts in a slow, mesmerising arc. When it hits skin again, a bold flush of amber roars to life, devouring the violet flame within the moment and glowing all the brighter. Its heat washes over my face like a scattered, scalding splash of water, and I gasp, flinching backward. Awe snags my heart's beat. The fire licks over each of my father's drifting fingers as if they are stepping stones, leaving no mark behind save a puffed trail of smoke.

"O mikik óurhara o imegk."

The sauntering wave of his voice, spoken with careful reverence, like each graceful slide of one syllable into another is a precious jewel to be cradled, steals my attention. The words he speaks are utterly foreign, but they awake a distant stirring of familiarity in my core. An old, old language. He's mentioned it before.

"The small make the big," he adds. "If you are to translate it in a literal sense. The meaning beneath is more tender." He closes his fingers over his warm flame, his eyes oddly stern, like he sees through the veil of time I dip into -- or maybe simply into my soul. Fear wanders darkly into his expression, fear I didn't see at the time but now feel as a shake in my bones. "One spark may catch upon the winds of change for the better, but equally, it only takes that same spark to light the path to destruction."

He spoke from experience. Those words were a warning I was too young to understand, and one I am now far, far too lost to listen to. All I can wonder, when the spark hits the carpeted floor of Oscensi's throne room, is whether he ever imagined the two might collide.

A bout of destruction lit for the greater good. Is there such a thing?

I doubt it. It's vengeance I taste, flecks of coppery blood on my teeth, storming embers brewing in the pit of my stomach, as I wrench heat into the waiting air.

The fire spreads quickly. It draws a sharp horseshoe around me, blazing up searingly bright at each point it catches, then ripples outward in waves. A shout of surprise echoes from the outer regions. I whirl in a hurry, hands outstretched to the point of strain in my arms as I search through the wild smudges of orange.