the angst album

#11. An honest fiction.

Looking back on it, it was really stupid to use so much fire around so much wood. I suppose it was the nature of the Mists, always damp, always cold. It was hard to imagine a fire that hadn’t been coaxed, bullied, pleaded with, and cursed at until a tiny flicker-flame grew. It never seemed dangerous to us.

June thought it was because we used to be so lonely. Fire is an easy friend; you feed it and it keeps you warm. You help it and it helps you and you can share it with others. Growing up was hard for all of us, she’d explain, hugging her knobbled knees to her chest. Not many things made as much easy sense as fire friendship.

Riley said we had fires for the same reason we had bridges; to feel in control. It was human nature, as far as Riley saw with his big brown eyes. The world was frightening, full of the unknown. The Mists were so big, and we were so small; how else would we ever feel safe?

Azalea, perched up on her artist’s stool, said it was because we needed it. All the blue and gray and white would drive us mad, because we were made of reds and golds and greens and purples and vibrant violent shimmering light. Her slender white hands would add a stroke to her painting and her hard gray eyes would soften and she’d smile and say we needed it because it was.

Matt didn’t know why we had fires. He didn’t need them. It wasn’t boasting—he climbed higher, waded deeper, and had a great deal more scars than the rest of us. We were afraid of the dark, he’d say with rolling eyes. He wasn’t.

Years later, Jake and I were sitting around a firepit, far away from the Mists. We’d grown up, you see. We’d outgrown the Mists, the tree forts and the little trickle of a stream. We were old now, almost twenty-five.

I wondered if Jake missed Riley and Matt the way I missed June and Azalea. Sure, June had been needy and Azalea didn’t make sense half the time, but they were part of me. I knew that now. They were children of and in my mind, my heart, my soul. I might have grown up, but they never would.

"Do you ever just want to go back to the Mists?" Jake asked, breaking our silence. Oh, he had grown up into a handsome young man; clean shoes, collared shirt, a cute butt, but somewhere underneath he was still a little kid. He likely saw the same in me. "Just go back and see it again?"

"It wouldn’t be the same." I said. "It’s not the Mists anymore; it’s just a place now."

"God, you sound like Azalea." He said with a chuckle, and I laughed, and he laughed, and we laughed far too long. The joke wasn’t that funny.

"No, but I mean, this fire." I waved at the cheery little thing, crackling away inside of its stone cage. "In the Mists, it would’ve meant something. Friendship or protection or balance or weakness. It’s just a fire now. Maybe they’ve always just been fires."

"No." The tone in his voice reminded me that he wasn’t just cautious little Riley, he was boastful brave Matt as well. The fire flashed in his eyes, as much a part of my childhood as my knobbled knees and paintings. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed the sight.

"No, they were never just fires."