On the edge of the meadow, she burns.

It defies logic, she thinks, that she has burned for as long as she has. All fires die eventually,  but not hers — not her. She is not even sure what fuels it anymore, because all the anger and rage of her youth has faded to nothing but cold, forgotten ash. She almost misses it. Somehow, the fury was better than the bored indifference. There wasn’t really a reason to be angry anymore, was there? She did not care that she was nearly untouchable. The small portion of the population that could withstand the flames that tirelessly licked across her body were not necessarily anyone she wanted to be touched by, the one — the only one — she has ever wanted is long gone.

She had burned through that anger, too.

She had tried letting herself miss him, she had tried blocking him out, and she had tried forgetting him. In the end, the cycle had run its course, leaving her as she is now.

Apathetic, bored, and detached from it all.

From where she stands she can see the flame-like bird as it soars across the lightening sky, and behind her flickering forelock her eyes narrow briefly. Fire always caught her attention, as much as she despised it. Like calling to like, as they say. Mostly it catches her attention because she cannot remember the last time she encountered anyone, or anything, with any type of fire magic. This is a shapeshifter, of that she is sure; she was born in this place, long before magic ran rampant the way it did now, and she knew Beqanna’s magic as she knew herself.

Despite her better judgement (she never enjoys the conversations, but she is also desperate to feel something, even if it is putting herself in a situation that will only end up irritating her) she finds herself walking towards the revived tree and its savior. Engulfed in flame and shimmering with sparks, she exercises virtually no caution over standing so close to the flammable wood; she has yet to burn this place down, despite her best efforts. “What made you decide to do that?” she asks the phoenix, not entirely blunt though her voice has never been soft, either. But ever the cynic, she did not entirely understand the idea that anyone would do something simply for the sake of being kind.

When he transforms from phoenix to stallion there is the faintest shifting of her face, a knowing spark that glints in her eyes as if she longs to say I knew it. It wasn’t as if he had been concealing his identity, but she feels validated all the same. He reminds her of a flame, but different than the kind she is ignited with. She is a wildfire — flickering orange and sparks of red, begging for a wind to give her a reason to spread. With his deep blue and edges of orange she would liken him to something that may burn hotter, but is  steadier — the kind of fire that endures instead of devours.

Somewhere deep in her chest, an ember of jealousy is stoked, but she refuses to breathe life into it.

Where once seeing someone exercise mastery over their powers would have been all the reason she needed to despise them, she no longer let that part of her anger control her. Through years of trial and error she has come to the conclusion that her fire does not follow the same rules; it is not something that she is meant to be able to manipulate, at least not in its current state. Her skin would always be alight, a permanent shield that she could never lower, even when she wished to.

It’s a blessing, she supposes, that the moments where she actually would want to lay her armor down are so few and far between that the uncontrollable fire is a nonissue.

And so she watches him shift into something equine and she does not let herself be jealous, and she tries to keep herself from being suspicious of his kindness. Kindness is a strange thing to her, as it is not often something she inspired in those that she met. A younger version of her would have pushed back against this, would have seen how far she had to go until his kindness broke down into something sharper and then tried to blame him when she cut herself on the shards,  but instead she only watches him with that same steady, unflinching gaze. “I am not sure I have ever met anyone that could heal trees,” she says, also not unkindly;  simply bad at making conversation. She thinks of Isilya and her magic, and realizes she probably could (and probably has)  healed trees, but she does not correct herself, because she finds herself distracted by his name.

Fireheart.
The irony would be lost on him, but it is not lost on her. Her entire life she has been trying to outrun the fire and yet the more time passes, the more she is consumed by it, and it finds her at every turn. Her lips quirk into something like a bemused smile, and she repeats his name through the flickering flames of her own lips, “Fireheart. My name is Brinly.”

She wishes, again, that this was easier, or that she was better at it.

She has lived most of her life chained to her bitterness and self-loathing, and trying to navigate the world without their weight has her feeling unmoored. Words don't come easily when they’re no longer sharpened by anger. The anger is still there, of course, but it is more of a quiet simmer than an inferno. Easier to manage, maybe, but it leaves her quiet, hollow.  She can’t remember the last time she had a real conversation, or at least, one that didn’t veer into an argument or end in some kind of fight.

With guarded, fire-lit eyes she watches him, her expression still mostly unreadable. At his comment about being the first tree healer she exhales a sound that might almost pass for a laugh, but she does not say anything.

She wonders what it might be like to have the gift of fire but not be so entirely consumed by it. To seemingly possess only the good things about the element; the strength and the spirit, the captivating spark. Ever since the day her skin ignited into a flame that never extinguished, her world had felt tilted and wrong, and no matter what she did, nothing seemed to make it right. She isn’t even sure what she thinks would fix it at this point; even if the fire were to disappear entirely, it doesn’t feel as though there would be anything worth saving in the ashes.

She is still watching him, and yet somehow, his touch manages to catch her off-guard.
A jolt races through her like an electric shock as she sucks in a sharp breath, reflexively flinching away from him as if he had burnt her. “Don’t,” the word comes out blunt, but there is an undertone of panic to the single syllable, her heart beating erratically in her chest. Even reaching into the darkest depths of her memories, she could not recall the last time anyone has touched her, and beneath the flames the weight of his touch still lingers.

It takes a moment for the surge of adrenaline to slow, and for her mind to form coherent thoughts through the static — to realize that she had, somehow, not burnt him. Maybe it was stupid of her to have not already made the connection that he would not be quite so easily harmed by fire, but she wouldn’t have predicted that he was impervious to it.

Slowly, the tension eases from her rigid frame, though not entirely. Somewhere beyond the suspicion and confusion there is a curiosity kindling, and, finally, she says, “I don’t understand how that is possible.”

His reaction causes guilt to burn at the back of her throat, and she doesn’t know why she can’t seem to do this without hurting someone in some capacity, each and every time.

She wonders if it would have been better if he had been angry instead.
His apology feels like sea-water on a wound, vibrant and burning, and she realizes she doesn’t know how to navigate this when it has not devolved into fighting. Even though there is nothing in his demeanor that suggests he is about to unleash some kind of cruelty against her, she finds herself tensing anyway. It is difficult to see, beneath the flicker of flame; the way her eyes turn to unreadable shields, the way muscle pulls taut beneath the flames across her skin. But it is there, coiled and tight in her chest, in the clench of her jaw as she waits for what always comes next.

It doesn’t come; instead his own body loosens, and he keeps talking, propelling the conversation forward almost as if nothing had happened.

You and I. The phrasing shifts something inside of her, as if a previously barricaded door has been opened. She had been trying to outrun fire for so long that she had never considered turning to face it. Instead she had only let herself want the things she couldn’t have —  like Brigade and his ice (the fact that she even thinks of him, the absolute briefest flicker in her mind, ignites such a searing pain that she remembers why she had boarded him up).

She had poured fuel onto her own fire, stoked her own anger to such an impossible height that it had had no choice but to burn and burn until it choked itself out.

Her eyes follow the blaze that he creates, and she ignores the small ember of jealousy that it sparks. She can’t actually control or manipulate her flames — that is the root of so much of her frustration. But before she can think too hard on it he is disappearing and re-emerging as a shadow, all the light seeming to be swallowed by its void.

There is a long pause as she turns over the things that he has said, and the things that he has shown her. In the silence she has found that she has stepped forward, the edges of her fire-glow reaching for and then disappearing into the newfound darkness. “Were you born this way?” she asks him, her mind working through a puzzle that he cannot see, thinking back on how she had been born plain and natural and how everything she is now had fallen over her like some kind of curse.