I Am Lightning

We made camp for the night in a small knot of trees not far from the road.
“We should name our horses,” said Joshua. I considered this. I didn’t want to get too attached to mine, and if I gave it a name, I was sure that would happen, but I didn’t want to deny him such an opportunity. Besides, there were many things Joshua had to learn, and I was worried we wouldn’t have that much time to learn it all. I really didn’t know what the shadow creatures were up to, or where they were. It really was a perverse game we were playing.

“Shadow would be a cool name for your black horse,” Joshua suggested. I winced, and felt a strange cold feeling crawl through my stomach. I shook my head at him.
“No... I think I like Fall. Fall is a nice name.”
“Fall is a name?”
“It is now. What name will you pick for your roan?”
Joshua stroked the long nose of his horse for a moment. “Would you get angry if I called mine Rise? Fall got me thinking... Rise and Fall would work well together, don’t you think?”
“Really?”
“Well you’re the one who named your horse Fall!”
I laughed. “Alright, alright! Rise and Fall. Now, let’s make a fire. If you want to try and make some sort of shelter, you’re free to attempt it. I’m used to the rain.”
Joshua gave me a worried look. “You think it’ll rain tonight?”
I glanced up at the sky. There weren’t any clouds out at all, just a nice, nearly full moon sitting in a navy sky. Stars sparkled about, but not at bright as the silver moon. On a night like this, unless a freak storm rolled in from no-where, it shouldn’t rain at all.
“Yeah... it’ll probably rain tonight.” I turned and headed away towards another thicket of trees, coming up with only a small amount of dried branches. I wasn’t too worried- it was a warm night for the moment, and I only wanted a fire to warm my leftover rabbit meat. Oh, and to test Joshua. I’d make him start it.

I arrived back at camp to find that Joshua had piled together some long, leafy branches over his head, intersecting them over two branches growing from a tree opposite where we’d tied the horses. If it was a light rain tonight, it might just suffice. But if there was a storm... I grinned.
“Alright, here’s your firewood. Go ahead and light the fire for us,” I said, dumping the wood in the middle of our small clearing. Joshua looked up at me.
“Do you have flint and steel?”
I snorted. “No. But you should be able to make a fire without it.”
I sat down opposite him and grabbed one of the sticks, then proceeded to pick off all the bark so it was smooth and speared my rabbit meat with it. I looked up to see Joshua watching me.
“Well?” I asked.
“What am I supposed to do?” he said, “rub two sticks together?”
“No, you’re supposed to use your power to make fire. You want to become the Fire Master, don’t you?”
He looked at the branches stacked up together and his brows furrowed as he concentrated. He raised his hands over the sticks as though a fire was already there and he was warming them. I closed my eyes, pulled off a small chunk of rabbit meat and ate it cold. It was alright cold. Shuffling back slightly so I was up against a tree, I tipped my head back and waited. I knew how stubborn fire people could be, so all I had to do was wait.

After ten minutes, I heard a small whooshing sound, and felt a warmth against my skin. I opened my eyes, and there sat a triumphant Joshua with a huge grin on his face, and a small fire next to him.
“Well done,” I said. “Now tell me how you did that.”
“Well... I concentrated all of my body heat into my hands, and placed them near the firewood. When it got hot enough... the wood began to burn, and the fire appeared.”
I watched the flamed flicker for a moment, then propped my rabbit meat over it.
“You’d better get some food unless you want to starve,” I said to Joshua, “cause I’m not giving you any of this.”
Joshua appeared shocked and angry. “What! Where on Earth am I going to find some food?”
I blinked my eyes, and felt the current of a few small rodents nearby. This place had plenty of rabbits. I told him that, and his red eyes lightened considerably to a glowing orange.
“How am I supposed to catch a rabbit? I’ve never been hunting before!”
“Your father gave us both bows and quivers full of arrows. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“If you’re going to be like this,” said Joshua, anger making his voice tremble, “I’ll just turn around and go straight home. I’ll take both Rise and Fall with me, too!”
“Okay,” I said, “off you go, then.”
Joshua seemed to struggle with words for a few moments, and then all of a sudden a bow was in his hands, and a quiver on his back. He turned and stomped from the clearing. I felt a few animals bound away when they heard his footfalls shake the ground. But he’d learn to calm down and move quietly if he wanted to catch some food. If he didn’t learn to control his rage, he’d starve.

It was a fair few hours later when he returned, a possum in his hands. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. He’d done much better than I thought he would. I really was quite impressed.
“Finally,” I said, “took you a while, didn’t it?”
Joshua’s flaming orange eyes glared at me as he threw some more branches into the fire I had tended as I waited. I’d had to go and find more firewood, but he didn’t need to know that.
Joshua sat down, and stared at the possum in his hands. He looked over at me.
“Do you have a knife I can borrow?” I nodded, and pointed to the saddle bags on Fall, where I’d stowed mine. I then got up, grabbed a bow and quiver, and walked away from the camp, out into the silent night. I kept three knives on me, and sharpened them whenever I came to a town. Again, it was always best to be prepared.
I was somewhat irritated that I’d have to track down a possum. Rabbits were always nicer, and easier. They didn’t hide behind branches, and most of the time they made it really easy when they cowered inside their holes. Dig one up, and you’ve got yourself a cornered rabbit.
I slipped into slow-time, breathing deeply, and tip-toed my way through various thickets of trees, until finally I felt the current of a possum, way up high in a tree. Quiet as a mouse, I pulled an arrow from the quiver, set it in the bow, pulled back and aimed. With an almost silent whoosh the arrow curved up and smashed straight through the small, thick skull of the possum, which tumbled to the ground. I slipped back into normal-time, and for a moment enjoyed feeling the current of the other small creatures around as they scurried away. I returned to camp only ten minutes after leaving it.

Well, I thought, Joshua had the right idea. He’d cut off the head of the possum, and was midway through skinning it when I arrived. He looked up, and his flaming eyes settled back down to red as shock took over his features.
“How’d you catch that so fast?” he asked. I shrugged, grabbed another knife from my saddlebags, and commenced to deftly skin the animal. I allowed Joshua to watch as I cut off certain parts, cleaned out the intestines and otherwise readied the animal for cooking. I snapped two branches from a tree which were both forked, shoved them into the ground on either side of the fire, speared the possum with my smooth stick, and popped it over the fire. Joshua took only a couple more minutes than I did, then his sat cooking merrily next to mine. I hadn’t really needed more meat, I just wanted to make sure he knew exactly what he needed to do. I didn’t want him eating something poisonous and getting sick on me.
I commenced to snap off two rather thick branches from another tree, breaking off the ends so they were just long, thick, smooth sticks. I threw one at Joshua, who cursed as it hit his head.
“Ow, what did you do that for!”
“You should have been paying attention,” I replied. I then took a few steps towards him and swung my stick at his head, which he narrowly blocked with his own stick.
“What are you doing!” he yelled at me, his eyes like flames once more.
I didn’t reply, just started beating him with my stick. Joshua was on the defence almost the whole time, half blocking my moves, half getting walloped by my stick. This rather painful process (for him) continued for another twenty minutes. I finally stopped when, after a decent block on his part, his stick split into two and I gave him a nasty scratch down one arm. I walked back to the fire to turn both our spits, broke off another branch for Joshua and hurled it at him. This time he caught it with one hand.
“We’re not doing that again, are we? Look what you did to my arm!” he yelled, and all of a sudden was blocking again as I swung once more at his head. This time, he got himself into a pattern and managed to block all of my strikes, and suddenly swung with one of his own. I blocked easily and counterattacked, jabbing him in the stomach. He grunted and dropped his stick, moving both hands to his belly, and I lifted my right leg and kicked him in the chest. He toppled to the ground with a cry. I turned and watched the smoke from the fire make a lazy trail up into the sky. I could hear Joshua sobbing, and ignored it. If I wasn’t tough on him, he wouldn’t get anywhere. After a few more minutes I went to check on the meat. It was ready. I pulled mine from the fire and blew on it slowly, watching as Joshua got to his feet, grabbed his own meat, and ate in silence, his eyes staring into the fire. He ate his meat instantly, without having to wait for it to cool down. Fire people could not sustain burns.

Nor, really, could Lightning people. It was just a force of habit.

Oh, and as I predicted, it did rain. As I sat brooding, clouds began to gather, and when my thoughts started to flicker back to the day I discovered the ruins of the Lightning Realm, thunder boomed in the sky, and lightning burst through the clouds. Joshua huddled beneath his pitiful shelter which ended up blowing away as a strong wind picked up. The rain started, and the fire was drenched with a chorus of hissing noises and much smoke. We both huddled beneath two different trees as the cold droplets pricked through our clothes, and stung our exposed skin like flecks of ice upon us. I didn’t worry too much about the cold. For while both Fire and Lightning people didn’t worry about burns, we also had enough heat in our bodies to not worry about the cold. We were practically weather resistant.