Sunfire never hesitated a moment in his life.
Certainly not as a kit; he was up with the sun he was named for, darting in and out of the nursery before the rest of the clan had so much as rubbed the sleep from their eyes. Apprenticeship did little to dull his zest for life either. He didn't so much
learn new information as he did
devour it. Hunting, leadership, strategy, healing, storytelling, and more- he wanted to know it all, and he made his curiosity
everyone's problem. The whole clan learned to brace themselves when a certain fire-bright scoundrel came a-calling. After all, no whim was too small or fascination too great where Sunfire was concerned! Even adulthood couldn't dent his outrageous enthusiasm. It merely focused it, channeling all that boundless energy into something vaguely resembling productivity. There was always prey to hunt, moss to gather, trenches to dig, some minor task that needed doing, and Sunfire tackled all of them with equal aplomb.
But somehow he always wanted
more. The storytellers' tales had settled into his heart and kindled there, a small but stubborn flame that would not be denied. It drove Sunfire ever outward, across the clan's boundaries and into the wide, wild world beyond. More than once he limped home bloodied but beaming, regaling all and sundry with (...only slightly exaggerated) tales of what he'd seen out there. Trees that scraped the sky! Mountains so tall the snow never melted from their flanks! Rivers that overflowed with enough fish to feed a hundred clans! The stuff of wondertales was out there. He'd seen it with his own eyes, and no amount of lecturing could steal that wonder from him.
No one was particularly surprised when Sunfire announced his intentions to leave his birth clan. The whole clan had long ago accepted that the same storm that had borne their little spark into their lives would someday sweep him away. Insisting Sunfire stay in the lands of his birth would be like... like demanding the wind stay still, as impossible as it was cruel. Better to embrace his departure, they decided, than to insist he change the very essence of who he was.
And that was precisely what they did. Sunfire left his homeland with the well-wishes of his clan still ringing in his ears, heart full to bursting with the sort of love that never dies.
-🔥-
Sunfire never met a story he didn't adore, but his favorites revolved around what he fondly termed 'storybeasts'. Boars with hide like stone, deer as white as fresh-fallen snow, owls that carried night in their feathers and left stars in their wake- all of them captured his imagination as little else could. It was only natural, then, that he set his sights on the storybeasts. They
had to be out there. Storytellers from far and wide told the same stories, after all. Details varied from teller to teller, but the heart of them, the irreducible core, remain unchanged. Clearly they had taken inspiration from
something- and he wanted to find it.
He succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings.
A scant moon after Sunfire's departure the scent of smoke reached his nose. A wiser cat would have stopped then and there. Sunfire, however, had never been accused of being
wise. He followed the scent to its source: the remains of a once-towering forest, now reduced to smoldering ruin. A fire had clearly raged here, one fiercer and hotter than any he had seen before.
At its heart, surrounded by destruction on a staggering scale, lay what Sunfire could only term a firebird.
Storytellers had long spun yarns about birds made of flame, of course. Kithood stories utterly failed to capture the majesty and horror of the real deal. There was a certain terrible elegance in every line of the great eagle's form, a threat implicit in its razor beak and talons. This was a creature made to hunt, to kill, and the predatory gaze it turned upon Sunfire left no room for doubt. This blazing tyrant of the firmament, this menace born in the heart of a star, would brook no invaders in its territory. The way it hissed at him- a sound like water sizzling on lava, or hot metal searing through flesh- made that abundantly clear.
Why, then, could he not tear his gaze away?
As much damage as the firebird might have wrought upon the forest, the forest had clearly fought back. Ugly black fissures stretched across the avian's aerodynamic form, tracing out a spiderweb of injuries that clearly precluded flight. Many of its feathers were simply gone, wrenched out by some mystery force. Magma- perhaps what it possessed in place of blood?- had pooled around its resting place. Now cooled, it clung in glassy clumps to the firebird's feathers and legs, obsidian armor layered over infernal flesh.
Realization struck Sunfire like a bolt from the blue. Every tale and myth that spoke of firebirds said they kept to the highest peaks, eschewing the company of wingless mortals. They returned to earth only to nest... or to be reborn in cleansing flame. This firebird must have suffered some grievous injury while aloft. It hadn't landed here intending to torch the forest to the ground. It had simply... crashed, its legendary endurance finally at an end.
And now it was dying.
He should have run. He should have turned tail and fled, wiping every memory of the forest and its otherworldly inhabitant from his mind. The firebird, after all, would not meet its final end in this burned-out forest. It would simply rise again.
He, on the other hand, was not so lucky. A single clumsy blow from a flailing wing or talon would send him straight to Starclan.
But Sunfire had never hesitated before, and he wasn't about to begin now. He took one step forward, then another, and another. In a twinkling he was directly before the storybeast, eye to eye with something even he had privately doubted was real. It regarded him with eyes like suns in miniature, piercing in heat and intensity alike. It was watching him, he thought with a shiver, thinking thoughts every bit as complex as his own.
It was deciding whether or not to end him where he stood.
Eventually the scales must have tipped in his favor. The storybeast elected not to swipe his head from his shoulders then and there. Instead it sighed, a sound like magma bubbling deep underground, and bowed its head. Some imp of perversity made Sunfire pad forward, reach out, touch his muzzle to that terrible obsidian beak-
Flames consumed him from the inside out, and for a very long time Sunfire knew nothing at all.
-🔥-
The storytellers had much to say of firebirds and their rebirth in flame. None of them ever detailed just how that rebirth came about. Sunfire had never considered the process either. If pressed, he might have guessed it involved an egg, perhaps one made out of coal or ember or some other thematically-appropriate material, that hatched into a firebird reborn.
He would never have guessed one could reincarnate by
transferring its powers into a cat present at the moment of its demise. But that, it transpired, was precisely what had happened. When Sunfire awoke again- which came as a surprise unto itself- a strange new power thrummed in his veins. Sparks flew from his paws when he ran. Flames kindled and extinguished at his command. Injuries erased themselves in great gouts of fire. Somehow, some way, he had inherited the firebird's effortless mastery of fire.
Control came with time. Sunfire swiftly learned how to
not start wildfires everywhere he went. He even learned how to pass on some small measure of the divinity that now dwelt in his veins. Hesitance, on the other hand...
-🔥-
Sunfire only learned the value of hesitance, of
forethought, in the years following his transformation.
Fire is dangerous. One need only spend too long in the sun and scorch their pawpads raw to learn that firsthand. Sunfire knew that too. Fire was a part of him now, as inherent to him as his bright eyes and overwhelming energy. He
knew, right down to his bones, that the flames blazing in his soul could harm others just as effortlessly as they fueled him.
He knew that, and others still suffered in the heat of his arrogance.
It started, as so many things did, with the best of intentions. Sunfire's habitual wanderings brought him to a sun-blasted land all but devoid of life. Lesser cats- or perhaps wiser ones- would have moved on. These cats, though, the dozen or so brave souls who called themselves Blazeclan, chose not to. They settled in, set down roots, and began the brutal task of eking out a living in the desert. Their box canyon home offered shade and shelter. A spring in the canyon's depths provided life-giving water. The desert supported just enough wildlife to feed a small clan, provided they were wise and resourceful in equal measure. It wasn't
easy, by any stretch of the imagination, but Mallowstar and her clan were making it work.
All of which made Sunfire wonder: what could these hardy little desert-dwellers with some help from the divine?
To Mallowstar and the cats of Blazeclan Sunfire must have seemed like the answer to their prayers. He descended from on high, a blur of fire-bright fur and booming laughter, and offered them blessed
relief. The merest touch of his muzzle rendered them wholly immune to heat. Bearers of his blessing could pad through sun-baked sand and suffer no ill effect. More miraculous still, they felt neither the choking ache of thirst nor the slow burn of exhaustion. The blessed became ever so slightly... well, like
him.And they
loved him for it.
For a time, Blazeclan prospered. They traveled farther, expanding the clan's borders fox-length by precious fox-length. Rationing came to an end. Mates who had long put off having kits began families of their own. The little canyon tucked away in the desert bloomed, and every cat dwelling there sang Sunfire's praises. They loved him. More than that, they
worshiped him. Their wondertales spoke not of the White Stag or the Stone-hide Boar, but of the Fire-Whisperer, the Spark-Strider, He Who Walks The Desert At Sun-High.
Neighboring clans, however, viewed Sunfire's arrival as curse more than blessing. The self-proclaimed god's meddling had only emboldened a clan already prone to short-sightenedness. Blazeclan was eating the desert alive, gobbling up territory and resources in great greedy bites. They'd already abandoned every tradition and code handed down from Starclan. What was stopping them from ousting their neighbors entirely? How long would it take before they tired of merely expanding their borders? Sooner or later it
would come to blows, and no one wanted to be the last cat to leap.
And so the clans of the desert banded together against what they deemed a threat both physical and existential: Sunfire and the 'blessed' of Blazeclan.
Sunfire's blessing could ward off the searing pain of thirst or the blistering heat of the midday sun. It was helpless in the face of mortal teeth and claws.
-🔥-
Years beyond counting have passed since Blazeclan's ignominious downfall. Cats no longer tell tales of the Stone-Hide Boar or the White Stag. None are left to speak of the Spark-Strider, either. The bones of the cats who once worshiped him turned to dust long ago. Sunfire knows this; he returns to the canyon in the desert every year. The once well-worn path into the canyon is gone now, erased by wind and sand. Storms have scattered the stones that once formed shelters. To the untrained eye, the canyon looks as if was never inhabited-
Save for the sixteen piles of flat stones arranged in a circle around the spring.
A stone is a poor substitute for a life. Sunfire knows this too. That does not prevent him from laying a new stone on each funeral cairn every year. There's a ritual to it now, a rhythm as familiar as it is comforting. The first stone goes on Mallowstar's cairn. The second goes on Vipertread's. Around the circle he goes, stone after stone, name after name that only he remembers.
Cricketpaw's cairn is the last. She always gets a special stone: one plucked from a river, a lake, an ocean, some body of water big enough to flow. The poor darling always dreamed of seeing 'the water that talks'. Now the waves she so longed to listen to are with her always.
When the last stone is laid, Sunfire sits amidst the headstones and the ghosts, and he talks. There and then he is not a god addressing his followers. He is simply a cat who made a mistake. He tells of his travels, of those he has met, those he has loved, those he has helped, even those he could not. He is honest. He is vulnerable. He forces himself to confront reality anew.
If he had been wiser- had hesitated even a moment before leaping onto the path straight to hell- none of these cairns would be here.
But here they are, and Sunfire has taken the lesson of them to heart. He is slower now, in joy and temper both. He thinks more. He speaks less. While he still travels- for not even a great trauma could snuff
that particular spark!- he does so 'incognito', passing himself off as merely a strangely marked cat. On the rare occasion he draws upon his powers, he's careful to keep his involvement as subtle as possible.
None of this will bring Blazeclan back. Sunfire knows this as well. But if his once-worshipers cannot live, he can at least live on in their name.
Sunfire was not born a god. He
became one: a god of fire, of blazing heat, of reckless and indiscriminate flame. Is it really that strange, then, that he chose to
remake himself as well?
Perhaps a god of fire can become a god of hesitance as well.
2,345 words!
