2024-07-06 - come, sit around the fire and be merry

Tasted Fire knows its Heat; it has lived with its Heat since it noticed mother leaving it, overcompensating for her lack of heat. It did not recognize at first how hot it could be. But that did not mean it could not learn, and as it tentatively reached out to its siblings–first its closest and then those farther away–it realized that it would need to shape its Heat into something more manageable.

Like a campfire.

It had latched onto that image that Gwillanth supplied once upon a time. It looked warm, inviting, not intense like the heat of the sun that it had once upon a time thought it wanted to be. It latched onto the campfire concept and shaped its thoughts around it. It tempered its Heat into the flames of the campfire rather than the roaring flames of a forest fire. Its mindvoice became the tickle of the fire, the heat of it as if someone faced it to warm up. The crackle and snap of braking twigs and wood. It tempered itself to feel more welcoming.

The egg sifted through various images as it pulled from other’s memories and crafted the feeling of [i]smell[/i] of the fire, of the baked goods that had been created from the fire’s heat. As its excitement grew, so did the flames of the fire until it became a roaring bonfire. As it became contemplative, the flames shrank until the fire seemed banked, nothing more than coals.

Come, it beckoned, sit around the fire and be merry.