It started as a song, and from that song came a spark, and from that spark bloomed a flower, all red and gold and reaching for the sky.
It started in the woods, far from where the giant flinthopper had first appeared, but whether the creature that birthed it had been large or small none could say, for none had been there to see its beginning.
From a flower grew a bush, burning merrily as it sent out runners across the dry ground, turning all it touched into more like itself: fire and heat and rising smoke beneath the branches. The small things fled first, rustling and bustling in their panic as they scampered and bounded and burrowed away. The birds began to take wing as the smoke rose, songs of territory and braggadocio changing sharply to calls of alarm and warning. The crows cawed harshly as they rose and swirled and flapped away, and as they passed over the Glade a white fox looked up from the squirrel that had been too slow.
His querying thought met images of flame and cries of danger and he dropped his meal in surprise. Trading fur for feathers he leapt for the sky, bursting above the canopy and heading in the direction from which the other birds were fleeing.
Fire! he called out, for once reaching out to any mind in range, anyone who could hear him. He reached out, too, for those birds who would respond to his call for assistance: two blue jays and three ravens were near enough to circle around him in a swirl of wings and feathers as he sent them the task to look for the bloatbeetles he hoped might help put the fire out.
Amalia
It started in the woods, far from where the giant flinthopper had first appeared, but whether the creature that birthed it had been large or small none could say, for none had been there to see its beginning.
From a flower grew a bush, burning merrily as it sent out runners across the dry ground, turning all it touched into more like itself: fire and heat and rising smoke beneath the branches. The small things fled first, rustling and bustling in their panic as they scampered and bounded and burrowed away. The birds began to take wing as the smoke rose, songs of territory and braggadocio changing sharply to calls of alarm and warning. The crows cawed harshly as they rose and swirled and flapped away, and as they passed over the Glade a white fox looked up from the squirrel that had been too slow.
His querying thought met images of flame and cries of danger and he dropped his meal in surprise. Trading fur for feathers he leapt for the sky, bursting above the canopy and heading in the direction from which the other birds were fleeing.
Fire! he called out, for once reaching out to any mind in range, anyone who could hear him. He reached out, too, for those birds who would respond to his call for assistance: two blue jays and three ravens were near enough to circle around him in a swirl of wings and feathers as he sent them the task to look for the bloatbeetles he hoped might help put the fire out.
