The images I'd seen on the net and in my fantasy books were a big, fat nothing compared to what I was seeing right now. They were completely different and inaccurate. What I was expecting was a massive, grey-black monster, filling the room with its sheer size and strinking fear into those in the room. A shrieking beast from the deepest pit of hell.
Boy, was I wrong. In front of me was something completely different.
A glowing orb of blinding white light shone before my eyes. It was much, much larger than I'd imagined the dark monster to be. It seemed to fill more than the whole room; it seemed to fill the whole house, and I saw why they lived somewhere so secluded.
I could tell it was Tim, even though there were no facial features at all. No hair, no eyes, no mouth, no body even, yet I could see so plainly that it could be no one else. Even had I not seen his human figure transform before my very eyes, I still would have recognised him.
I felt a burning in the back of my head, which I assumed had something to do with the pure light flowing from Tim, yet I couldn't turn away. My eyes were tearing up, but I could see him as plainly as day. The burn grew and grew, until there was nothing, and had never been anything, except Tim, myself and the burn.
It had only been a minute or so, although it felt like an eternity I had been standing there. Tim finally disappeared in an even brighter flash than I could have thought possible and stepped out of it, a mere human.
He came towards me, smirking, while I just stood there in awe. If you could imagine a cartoon character standing with glassy eyes and drool running from their mouth, you would've had the perfect image of me in a nutshell.
He extended his arm to me, and I took his hand, grasping it in my own. I gasped as the fire burned hotter and hotter within my core. I didn't know what was happening, and it was overpowering.
"Tim," I spluttered, pulling back my hand to try and stop the burning, but it didn't subside. It stayed there, flooding every inch of my being. Not just inside me, but outside. My skin crawled with the heat of whatever it was that was happening to me.
It wouldn't go away. It was seeping through my veins, through my skin. I raised one arm to my face, and shrieked at the sight.
To put it simply, my arm was on fire.
My whole body was on fire.
I was fire. I was made of it.
It wasn't an ordinary flame burning my flesh; charring my skin. I didn't really know what it was. It was the blinding white light again, but now enveloping all of me.
I looked to Reason and Mystery in a panic, but they were staring blankly at me. No reassurance.
All of a sudden, I could no longer see. I cried out, but there was no sound. The fire had engulfed me entirely; I was going to die. This was how a demon died.
I felt consciousness leach out of me like petrol from a hole in a tank.
I opened my eyes and found myself completely alone, and the most comfortable I'd ever been in my entire life.
I could see that the room was decorated to a theme of beige. Had the circumstances been any different I would have scoffed at the idea of "decorating" these people had, but it was so comfortable. I was starting to like beige if it meant this comfort.
I pressed my fingers around the bridge of my nose, trying to remember the events of what I assumed would have been the previous day, as I was tucked up in a warm bed of fluffy pillows and cosy sheets.
