There are few truths held to be universal across time and space; The sun brings us life, storms- while frightening- are necessary to growth, beginnings and endings are bathed in fire, and people- people die. My beginning was more literal than most others. Our family house had been set ablaze while my mother labored me out of her womb, and I was delivered into the arms of a soot stained midwife as flames licked the doors and black smoke filled our lungs. We all survived, happily. My father, ever the heroic General Mataeo de Leon, broke through the scorched hallways to escort us to safety out of the second story windows where the eldest of my brothers were quenching the flames. They named me Xipil, "noble one born from fire" for the trouble I caused. Time and history are cyclical. As the heat of the flames dancing in front of me begins to sting my face, I wondered if my parents would ever have considered that my death would so closely resemble the day of my birth. What of my brother? In the distance I heard his screams, but beyond the fire I cannot make out more than blackened shapes. Did our parents know he would die in the darkness, the way he was born? I wanted to fight back, but my limbs were heavy with the bitter pulque we had all shared just minutes ago when the gathering had been joyous and not yet turned traitorous. The fire is mesmerizing to my drunk mind and it focuses there on the bright pillars sweeping high into the sky above us where the rest of our family and any chance of help sleeps away peaceably oblivious. I didn't see the knife clutched in the hand of my best friend but I didn't need to. I knew what she was doing. Being torn open by knives hurt a lot less than I thought it would have. It was the fire devouring me which elicited the screams they so desired.
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Pronunciation Guide:
Xipil: (SZEE-pill)
Itztli: (it-ZIT-lee)
pulque: (PULL-kay) a fermented (alcoholic) drink
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New Fire
General FictionThere is a song as old as time itself, carried on the beat of the drums of war. Its refrains have not changed in generations, its outcome of destruction never changing... But if you could change it, would you? If the fires of revolution swallowed...
