Breathing Fire

Chapter One

                                                                                          Legacy

I looked at the small hill covered in rich green grass, and at the top of the hill stood the same tree. In every dream the tree changes, changes in size, color, and health, but you can tell it's the same tree. I started up the hill and looked up at the amazing crisp blue sky, but as soon as I took that first step up the hill. The sky darkened and the once blue oasis turned in to a violent storm of black and gray. It started to snow but as I held my hand out to catch the cold flakes, I realized it was not snow at all but ash falling down. I felt my heart quicken in pace, and I looked up at that beautiful tree that was brown and so full of leaves and life.

The moment I started up the hill, I glanced at the angry sky, which is now spitting lightning bolts lighting up the falling ash. The only light that there is and in the moments of flashing light I can see the tree ahead of me. I start to run hoping to outrun the darkness that has swelled behind me and filling the air like fog. As I step closer and closer to the tree the leaves begin to fall and turn into to ash as it hits the once green grass, now covered in nothing but a mounting buildup of the ash like snow. A strike of lighting lands at my feet for a moment all I can see if the blinding light. I rub my eyes and look up at that tree and in the flashing of the lighting, the tree starts burning, and in my eyes all I can see is it burning. I start to go farther forward when I see movement of something. Maybe a shadow of something maybe just my eyes playing tricks. I close my eyes hard hoping to wash away any shadow the flash of lighting left echoing in my vison.

I squinted my eyes in hope to make the shadow clearer, in hopes I can see what is moving next to that tree. The tree that is now wrapped in flames and consumed in red and blues, and somehow, I could feel the pain of the tree, I could hear it almost crying or yelling in pain. My heart was aching, and my head started to throb. When I saw the shadow come around the tree. To my horror in the flashing of light I could hear the moaning that was not coming from the tree, but from the now man shaped shadow. As he raised arm, the shadow burst into flames, the once shapeless thing was now a man burning in front of me, burning like the tree. I stood still, I could not move, I could not breathe, as the black sky lit up with flashing yellow light. I closed my eyes in hope to make this stop, in hope when I open them once more, I can see peace and beauty.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, I looked slowly at the large darkened hand and I knew I should have felt fear. I knew I should have felt in danger and the urge to run far and hard, run as far as I can till, I couldn't breathe, and I would fall to the earth in the hopes of finally being safe. The hand was comforting in a way it felt like safety, so I started to turn my head to see the man that the hand was attached to, but when I finally turned, I saw nothing but blackness and an empty space where a man should be standing, but it was just the outline of a man, a large warrior was there and in the same moment I swear I could see it, but still I can say I truly saw nothing at all.

I woke up sitting in bed, sweating like I was consumed by the same fire that burned the man. I was confused and lost, for I have always had these dreams but lately there are more of them and they feel more and more like reality that I could no longer wake from one without the sense that it was more than real.

"Legacy, Legacy are you ok?" My grandmother asked across the room from her bed.

Our home like most of our people include one room that we sleep in, that also holds a cooking surface and a sink. Our people are friendly and doing the days everyone helps the village in one way or another. We survive as a people; we are all like a giant family. While the adults go about the building, planting, fishing, and hunting the kids and teens go to what we call out teachings. They teach us of our magic, where it came from, and how it is in everything that we are, and everything that already is. What magic use to be and what magical things that use to run our lands, but since the king became king, magic been fading, and my generation never got to witness the world before the king.