Saxifrage Fire

0022

Alethea snuck down the creaky stairs and into the living room where Ezi and Hitoshi were curled up on the carpet and blankets. Ezi clung to his arm in her sleep. There was a pair of tin cups stained from hot coco and a children's board game scattered by the hearth. She'd heard them talking and laughing quietly to each other until it had seemed they'd fallen asleep.

It had been around one in the morning when she'd heard Ezi's scream, footsteps, and Hitoshi's voice comforting her in Angelas.

Pa had stepped into the hall to assure her.

"It's okay, Thea. Ez gets night terrors sometimes. Oshi's got her."

She tiptoed around them to place another log on the fire, stoking it with the prong until it caught and cast amber light and heat over them, then reached down to pull the blanket over Ezi's shoulders and Hitoshi's feet. She picked up their cups and put them in the sink before heading for the door, grabbing her staff from its perch on her way out.

The early morning air nipped at her cheeks as she hurried over the granite scape towards the lake. There were a few dozen tents down the slope, where the granite mountain top met the woods. She watched the last wisps of smoke from the nights' fires rise into the violet morning sky. A young man ducked out of his tent and turned to spot her with large brown eyes.

She quickly averted her gaze and picked up her pace. The last of the trucks had arrived with the survivors only a few hours earlier. The Acahtta tribe had come running from their valley of oaks and rivers to help transport the survivors to the mountain base. She'd stood on the wooden balcony watching the silver dust clouds the trucks made in the moonlight as the last of them parked by the lake. The arrival had caused an uproar as those already camped rushed to find their loved one's faces in the crowd. Telling from the songs of sobbing that carried in wind, most hadn't found who they were looking for.

She reached the road and climbed down the rock slope to a flat granite platform at the edge of the lake. She stilled, her boots inches from the softly lapping water. It was just her and the expanse: a still, dark, lake and the barren granite-topped mountains. She sat down and drew her knees to her chest. She'd risen from bed with the vague idea that she'd practice with her staff, but that seemed stupid now. Why was it that she'd been so awake laying in bed, and now that she was up and moving, she could barely keep her eyes open?

She sighed and reached for a stone to toss into the waves but halted at the sight of a flower growing between the tiniest crack in the granite. It was white and symmetrical; she recognized it in a heartbeat. It was stupid, but she plucked it from its root and drew her staff igniting a flame that nipped her fingers as she held it beneath the flower. She watched the petals curl and gray in the heat until the once elegant thing became little more than ash. She tossed it into the water and watched it break apart.

"What a shame," came a voice.

She whipped around and watched Pa clamber down the slope towards her.

"Saxifrage is one of the few flowers that can grow in this altitude, and that one went to great effort."

"Sorry I disturbed the plant life," she grumbled, tossing a stone into the water hoping he'd get the message that she wasn't in the mood for company.

Pa sat beside her, setting his own more basic staff at his side.

She glanced at him, wondering if he'd come to help her train.

"There seems to be a ghost in the house; I keep hearing footsteps upstairs at night. Has it bothered you?"

She tossed another stone into the water and watched the surface ripple as she ignored his rhetoric for a moment.