Alright everyone. This is the reason I've been absent for so long. The Born Of Fire edits are coming along nicely, and I am curious to see what you all think of it so far. Below is a 7500 word preview of what's coming. Comment on the changes, tell me what you think and how I'm doing.
Phoenix felt the sweat dripping between his shoulder blades. The weight of the full buckets bent the thick oak pole over his shoulders, but he pushed on, his step never faltering. Most people in the village only had the strength to carry one bucket at a time from the river, but Phoenix insisted on carrying four. He didn’t like to venture from his house as it were, and four buckets would last him four days; four days he wouldn’t have to risk meeting someone on the path.
Fashioning a long pole of oak, he had cut four notches into it, slipping the handles of the buckets into them to ensure they wouldn’t slide off. He spied the gnarled old oak that marked the halfway point between the village and the river, and he dropped to one knee, carefully setting the pole and buckets on the ground. He sat down at the base of the tree, listening to the sounds of the wood. The birds sang their love songs, creating a melody of overlapping chirps and twitters. Spring had arrived in Yaag.
His palms ached, as they always did, and he rubbed them on the rough surface of his trousers. Ten years of denying his flame had not been easy on him, though his body still remembered the delicious flames from so many years ago. He sometimes hungered to unchain his power from within, to let loose in the moment and burn everything in his path. He cursed, closing his eyes and trying to steel his will when a shadow fell across him, blocking out the sunlight desperately trying to break through his eyelids.
“Hello Ember,” he said, without opening his eyes. No one else in the village could approach him without alerting him to their presence.
“Hello Phoenix,” she replied, and he heard her sit next to him in the shade of the large tree. “You missed lunch.”
“We needed water,” he replied. Phoenix quickly thought of a way to end the conversation before it began, for her tone of voice betrayed her intentions, to speak of things he was not in the mood to hear.
“Phoenix—”
“Don’t,” he said without opening his eyes.
“But Phoenix,” she began to argue.
He opened his eyes, taking in the unmarred view of her right side as she stared out onto the path. He knew where this conversation would lead, and he aimed to cut it off before it could reach that point. “I said, leave it.”
Still she persisted: “It has been ten years!” She turned a scowl on him, and he cringed at the sight of her full visage.
The entire left side of her face was scarred in a complex pattern, the scars continuing down past the neckline of her simple white dress. Her left eyelid drooped, almost covering her bright blue eye. She wore her hair long, and brought it over her shoulder, almost covering the scars most times, but now she chose to push her hair back over her ear, showing the scars. “You’ve grown into a man, and are yet to take a wife to bless our family with the joy of your children.”
“Family?” he scoffed. “What family?”
She began to interject and he raised a hand to stop her. “My father,”he spat, “removes himself from me publicly. The only family I have is you.”
“If you do not choose a wife soon, all the girls will be married off, and you will be left alone. I cannot, no, I will not go through the pain of seeing you live a lonely life!”
Phoenix bit back the hurtful remark on the tip of his tongue. He dropped his voice and spoke in an emotionless, even tone: “I want nothing to do with anyone from our village. The men jest, the boys point, the women and girls whisper amongst themselves.” He sighed, cursing under his breath once more. “They all know why I took my oath and still speak behind my back, thinking I cannot hear them.”
