Fire and Brimstone
“ Have you finished your book?”
“I have. And the other two after that.”
“Additions? Child do you ever take joy in anything other that script and stories?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well if there was anything you would like to do other than read, what would it be?”
….there was silence.
Flames were oddly hypnotic. In a way they could captivate for minutes or hours depending on the attention of one’s mind, they brought comfort and home but death and destruction. They could burn through homes and forests in the blink of an eye, always leaving ash in it’s wake. The unruly way that fire danced was much of the reason why Nyllae strayed for dabbling with it and even now she stood with a torch in hand among the darkness. Gathered were the household staff of her beloved mother. A hardened woman that seemed almost impossible to sway yet here she was upon a pyre, ready to be received back into the earth.
Ashes weren’t the soiled sadness of what fire left behind but a new essence of something that once existed.
Life.
For what seemed like eon’s the Shiverflame name stood by the teachings and job that the life-binder bid upon Azeroth. Her family nothing but devout followers and wardens to several broods over the centuries – stalwart in their like minded beliefs and their courageous hearts that fought for all life upon the planet’s crust. It was much of what was taught fervidly on to Nyllae from a small age and many, many more before her.
While she held noble blood and ever so lightly diluted, she was still a slave to a common goal and outcome to something beyond her. In the end, blood did not matter or who rose above who but who – in the end– held the power to bend wills and break lives.
Life had a terrifying cycle, something many feared but much of the fear seemed to come from not knowing about the unknown, what lay beneath closed lids that would never reopen. What passed through our vesseled bodies and into the aether. What parts of them did the dead leave behind aside from bloodlines and legacies to be told in stories?
It was time.
Stepping forward Nyllae lowered the torch’s flame upon the hay and tinder that crackled at its touch. Gifts were left with the Lady of the Shiverflame house and from Nyllae the only thing she could accurately send her mother off with was bundles of blue mageroyal twined along the wooden pillars and laced hatchings of the pyre. She stood for a long time letting the flames take her mind, losing herself completely as the fire spread over body, gifts and finally….the blue petals her mother admired so much. They curled, dying instantly from heat and flame and it was until they were gone and the pyra was half burned to nothing that she finally pulled her gaze to those that were still around.
This night, the last Shiverflame died fore Nyllae was never whole as she once thought herself to be. Part Shiverflame, part Starfury and by right, she was a mutt of scale and fur.
