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The lofty gods lived within a great stone egg, before it birthed the world. At least, so spoke this wanderer, whose wispy golden beard and green eyes fluttered brightly with shifting flames as he gave his telling.

Asiah had heard such tales before, as they were sacred to the folk of these lands, though still she listened with eager ears and widened eyes, for the man was clearly a storyteller of great craft. As he spoke, his hands would trace subtle shapes in the cool night air, his eyes flashing like glowing coals, and his voice gave colour and life to that great void he spoke of, the great void that existed before all else.

 Like the moon, that great stone egg had hung in a vast and empty sky, though the moon would have seemed a pale marble in comparison, for the egg's surface was carved and coated with bright dyes and runes of power; all alight with the energy of the world's creation.

'And the Gods within their Great Egg lived, loved and hated one another, as the matter of this world swilled like starlight yolk, without Song or Word to shape it.'

As the storyteller spoke, his eyes often darted to the elder watching over them, no doubt expecting some sort of payment after he had finished. Asiah and her brother-sister flames were taught not to give much meaning to the tales of settled men, for once their own learning and practice had ended they too would be travellers, going where needed, with song and fire their trade; for many were the stories of settled men, and many were their meanings shifting place to place.

And yet Asiah's teachers allowed such storytellers to work their craft; for they were well-received, particularly by the youngest, and it was the youngest who most often gave the elders trouble, for they had likely been just taken from their families, and not yet used to this strange, sometimes bleak, place.

'And Boelg, one of the mightiest of those first men and women, while wandering the stone egg one unceasing day became lost in a glittering quilt of stars; and, unlike in our time, the stars in those endless days were neither mapped nor known, so Boelg walked on till well and truly lost.'

Asiah looked around the campfire, and she saw many of their youngest lost in the tale, as lost as Boelg himself. Fire danced in their faces, made glints of their eyes and shadowy pits of awed mouths. Though, there was one face that seemed troubled in the midst of their gathering: Hylen, a boy only a few cycles younger than Asiah.

Cycles that had not been kind, and in their unknowable turnings, left a dark weight hanging on the boy's features. He had been a slave once, Asiah knew that much, and his hair was long and flax, eyes sullen. On a ship with raven sail and mast he had come, to the town and port lying by the nearby river--for that band of traders had found him past some other distant bend in the water, taking him for no fee, for they knew this firesinging temple lay onwards, having taken the route before.

Once discovered, Asiah knew that boys and girls of their kind were handled like stray flaming tinder, especially vulnerable ones, and were liable to be stamped out. Hylen was lucky to be turning this cycle with them, and yet he did not look that way; he looked as if he wanted to escape the endless, toiling pattern they all shared.

Asiah would speak to him, once the tale was done.


'What is the matter, Hylen?'

Where Hylen was usually sullen, peeking at his brothers and sisters through the fall of his long hair, and darting away whenever one looked back; he now answered Asiah with keen pleading in his face.
'It is my flame, Asiah. I feel it sharp and hot on my tongue and belly, coming with memories, which have not been good of late.'

In the storyteller's tale, the mighty Boelg had rediscovered his way home from that stretching quilt of stars through the help of a lone white gull, who was also headed back that way. Boelg followed the gull's strident cries in the darkness, and since then, gulls have always been a help to those travelling with only stars for company. Asiah just hoped she could be Hylen's gull, this time round. So the cycles turned.

'Do you wish I tell Danissa or Talavus?' she asked, naming the flamemother and father she knew Hylen closest to.

'No. Please do not. I could not stand a night in the mound, not with my thoughts and memories as they are.'

Asiah's mouth began to work, worriedly. She almost felt like asking Hylen as to the nature of his memories, and the thoughts associated; but she was unsure, having heard stories of the rough towns further north: their slavers, raiders and sellswords. She was not sure Hylen would like to share what it was like, to be subject to all that blood and darkness.

'On one ship, I was caged in with a hound, a proper Zerrech breed,' Hylen said finally, his voice faltering. 'I-I was close enough to see the barbs in its hide, the red stains of its claws. It barked and slathered at me.'

Asiah felt a chill spread across her limbs.

'The terror of that was bad enough, then one of my holders came down. He told me I was worth less than the dog, and my anger just broke out, the flame with it. You know how it can be, Asiah?'

She nodded.

'Fire began to curl from his beard, his breeches smouldering, and he ran about the hold, screaming, and I just laughed. Laughed with cruelty, with madness, as the Zerrech hound pumelled my ears with its barking. His fellows came down then, doused him, and they beat me till my laughter became sobs, and then till I could sob no longer.'

Silence followed Hylen's story, as Asiah struggled to imagine the things he'd been through. The cycles fell heavy on many.

'These and other memories torture me lately. And my flame flickers, as it did caged in that hold, as if it wants to escape. Sometimes it roars, Asiah, as great furnaces do in rich towns!'

Asiah's mouth twisted. She felt sure a flamemother or father should hear of this, yet Hylen had taken her into his trust, and to do so would betray him. As he spoke of this last blaze, his eyes had lit up, and Asiah saw twin fires leap out from the irises.

'Hylen, I really think we ought to tell-'

'-No! Just let this be our secret, Asiah. Already I feel my flame cooling, and a good sleep will see me bright and fresh come morning. Just like Boelg, I have been led back to land.'

Hylen smiled, though the curve of his lips could not sweep away sorrow, and he squeezed Asiah's arm before leaving. It seemed he had been listening to the storyteller, though not in the same way as the others, and Asiah stood there a while, her back to the fire where older brothers and sisters sat around, roasting nuts on copper sticks and talking of the journeying talecrafter. She sat with them, for a time, and laughed when a lad joked that gulls who could speak would likely just ask if you had any food before squawking away. Asiah roasted a few walnuts in the smouldering borders of the fire, among its sullen logs, and cracking them open and tasting the sweet warmth inside she relaxed.

Hylen would be fine. He was a tough lad, tougher than most of them, and had never shared himself with anyone as far as Asiah knew, before today. No doubt he would be feeling better come morning, for every walnut holds a sweetness in its shell! And so Asiah went back to her poor chamber of wattle and daub, with roof of turf that crawled with insects; the same as her flamemothers and fathers lived, each one spaced equally apart for reasons of fire.

And Asiah fell asleep, though it seemed in a blinking instant to be dawn, and for screams to be issuing through her walls. Rushing out with only a long woollen shirt, into the brightness, she was met by a tall column of swirling flame, issuing from a dense hot core.

Flames leapt up to dawn sky, gathered about blackened collapsed turf, cracked-hot clay and charred wattle: the remains of Hylen's hut.