On Mighty Wings of Flame

It's been a long time. My mind is fragmented, my attention split. I am one made two.

Weak. Weakness is death, because I am a legendary pokemon. And yet it is not, because I am a legendary pokemon. Then again, perhaps it will be the flame itself that is my death.

I have two eyes, but over what I see through my true eyes is what I see through my false eyes. I cannot focus. I see much and so nothing at all.

Zapdos and Articuno would destroy me, I know, save that they do not care of strategy or working together. Distracted as they are by their own battlelust, they are too busy fighting each other to kill me. Lugia stops them whenever there is danger, anyway. For the moment.

The years take their toll on all of us. Zapdos and Articuno reject the passing of time, their weariness making the understanding of eternity unbearable. They live in the moment, in the quick lunge of battle, with no knowledge of the past or future. Lugia sleeps longer and longer, waking slower. Someday he will not wake at all, or will wake too late. Then one of us shall die. It has happened before. Perhaps Ho-oh will break free of her melancholy long enough to heal whoever dies. Or perhaps not. She uses her power less and less, even in dire need, and is hard to reach. She, too, feels the years, and cannot lose herself to sleep or battle. She, more then any of us, feels the pain of the world.

Myself? I lose myself more and more as the years go by. How long ago was it that I first gave my flame to the humans, to burn as a beacon of hope, and placed a part of myself within, so that I could watch them?

Time passes quickly, like flames racing over the ground. Golden grains of sand slip by. But we do not see the sand as our time running out, rather, we see it with a pain of a different kind.

How long ago was it, I wonder, when the visions of what happened came slow and dim, when I had to focus to see? Long. Now I cannot block it even when I try. I am one mind in two bodies.

It became worse slowly, over the years, Recently, in as few as a hundred, maybe even a mere fifty, it has become worse by a thousandfold, very suddenly. The keepers of my flame pass it from torch to torch sometimes, forcing part of me to move, to transfer my fiery roots from a place with little fuel to another with little fuel. My flame is split, with a portion kept separate to re-light the torch so it will never go out.

My vision doubles, triples. I have trouble responding to those around me. Sometimes the torch-flame does go out, my focus destroyed by the halving of the flame. Once, humans knew that the flame would not fail, that it could be held underwater without sputtering. But having split it, I cannot sustain it properly. So they think the keeping of two flames is good, not realizing it is not fixing but creating the problem.

It is only on the rare occasions that one flame extinguishes that my focus returns, ever so slightly. Two visions is far better then three.

But time marches ever onward, though I am the only one, I think, who notices. The visions keep me anchored to the world, even as they separate me. Though I do not grow stronger, unable to focus enough to battle, my sight increases. I catch glimmers in flames other then my own now. Soon I will be unable to do anything at all in the world, unable to focus on the sight that comes from my own eyes, for it will be lost in the sight from a thousand flames.

I gave humanity my flame so I could watch over them, and watch them. They grow strong, far too strong, strong enough to upset the balance of power. I have seen it clearly over the years, for a long, long time. But even if I made the effort to tell one of the others, what could they do? Lugia sleeps, Articuno and Zapdos war, Ho-oh is too distanced from the world by her closeness. Like me. Perhaps it is the fate of fire to be bound by paradoxes. What more could be expected of the element that so closely imitates life – eating, growing, reproducing, even dying – while it destroys life?

There is still another paradox, of course. That the one who gave their freedom to watch over humanity and warn is too bound by the watching to speak the warning. The one who watches cannot see for the watching. Isn't there a saying, can't see the forest because of the trees? Or is it the other way around? Even my thoughts fragment.

Time is our undoing. The waves of the years smash against us, wearing us down. I wonder sometimes if I will go mad. Or if I have, or if I can. I'm losing myself. I can only be whole again if the flame –flames– fail. Which they won't. I think. Haven't, anyway. Is that good or bad?

In the beginning, I thought I could just let the flame extinguish. But I have poured so much of my power into it now, that I think it is more real then me. My flame-eyes are clearer then my true eyes. Are they my true eyes now? Will they be?

I'm not completely lost. A few times I have returned to myself, when my flame was attacked and when the fool attacked. But they may be the last times I ever do. The sight grows, my will lessens. Who can fight something for eternity?

Time passes. When the world was young, then we rejoiced in our power and acted with out heed of the consequences. Slowly we matured, took our place as the guardians of the world. Now, we are ancient, bound by a thousand thousand years, old beyond knowing and knowledge. Who can remember the passings of eternity?

Once, I flew over the world, with Articuno and Zapdos as companions, not the semi-conscious fighters of now. Ho-oh would fly with us too, hopeful and happy with her gift of life. I beat my wings to soar over the clouds, across the water, wherever and whenever I pleased. We were children, and content to do as we wished, untouched by time and the lifetimes of a thousand.

The sand of the hourglass fall, too much to count or understand. The years pass and yet they do not. We do not change, only the world. Which makes us change. Or is it our change that molds the world? Is there truly change, in this unending Now?

My thoughts are like fine white ash, blowing in a breeze. Focus is hard, remembering harder, thinking nearly impossible, movement, action, undoable, or so close it no longer matters. I cannot fly now. My wings of fire will not carry me, because I cannot ask them too. Even if I could, I might fall unknowing into the water, and not notice until at long last my fire extinguished, a mere instant before utter oblivion. To see truly only in the last, as my eyes dim.

I know much, and thus little. Soon I will know all, and thus nothing. The paradox of flames.