Her earliest memory was a flame, a mass of encroaching fire. Fire meets wood, and wood falls; fire meets grass…
Her earliest memory was a flame, a mass of encroaching fire.
Fire meets wood, and wood falls; fire meets grass, and grass melts; fire meets water, and water boils...
If fire touches my flesh, what then? This was her first inquiry.
Questions swifter than the blaze flooded her mind: Why, as fire touches all things, are its colors and scents never the same? Does fire have an end? What is its finality? Am I the fire? What makes me "I"?
A cry shattered her reverie: "Sister, run!"
This was the first summons she ever heard.
Hands reached her before the heat, sweeping her into a frantic flight. Fire fell behind, wind raced alongside; wailing echoed in her ears, and the firmament dawned ahead.
And so, amidst that first flight, the world slowly hummed into being.
In that endless race, she came to know the one who pulled her along as "Brother."
It would be long before she understood how the world described the fire she fled: wars unceasing, villages razed, lives reaped like weeds, and kin scattered like chaff.
The displaced spoke of the wildfire with weeping and loathing: "Cursed be that fire! It was that flame that ruined our homes! It was that fire that took so many lives!"
Then, she could not yet weave words into speech, only murmuring a few mimicked syllables: "People. Killing. Fire. Warmth."
Her words were stones cast into a pool, stirring a greater clamor: "Fool," "Cursed cripple," "Burden"... "Better to cast her off and be done with it!"
She grasped not the meaning, but the truth of their gazes: they loathed her as they loathed the wildfire.
"Brother" took her hand once more, shouting something at the crowd.
Then, he led her along another weary stretch of road. This time, the path had an end, and at that end stood a soul, one who possessed beautiful feathers, like a bird. The bird-like stranger took her other hand, just as her brother had, and said: "Come, let us go home."
"Who are you?" she asked.
The figure replied, "Henceforth, I shall be your mother!"
"Then, who am I?" she asked.
The figure said, "You? Oh, tell me, do you have names?"
They traversed a mountain of great height, yet the journey felt brief. For the road home is never long when it has a direction.
Beyond the peaks, "Father" arrived to receive them.
After a night of deliberation, Father and Mother told her, "You shall be Ying Ning, and he shall be Ying An."
From that day forth, she had a father, a mother, a brother, and a name.
From that day forth, she was no longer a stray wildfire; she was, at last, truly human.
Yet, this false deduction would claim its toll in the distant future.
Fire reclaimed all that the fallacy had granted: her "name," her "parents," her "brother," and even the very act of "running."
She would revert to being fire once more. Yet, she felt a faint stirring: this time, it would be different.
She would not be like a wildfire, violently devouring all it touches.
For while wildfire consumes the visible, what they left within her was a seed buried deep in the soil, waiting to crawl out from a heart and flow slowly from the eyes.