"...Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats,humiliations, and despairs—the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity..." ~ Letters from Earth

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Nurtured Heat

Niko lay on the grass, one ankle resting on his knee. The blades of grass tickled between his toes, but more than that, he could hear the whispers of the heat building in them where the sun bled into them.

They weren't words he heard. Coos, babbles, the formative sounds of infants barely aware beyond their own slim bodies. Niko spread his hands out in the grass, closed his eyes, and felt the fever inside him whisper in kind, a soothing lullabye that the infant heat responded to.

The earth heard it, too, and those feelings were stronger, broader, the grumbles of deep bones creaking jaws open to snuff the growing heat with cool breaths from below.

Snuff the newborn heat. Niko fretted, his fingers gripping into the grass, nails penetrating the soil. They weren't newborns. If they grew, if he fed them, there would be trouble. He did not want trouble. But the heat inside him kept crooning, and the heat of the grass babbled delight for the song.

A scent tickled his nose. A sharp smell that was tangy — and alarming. His eyes snapped open and he sat up. The smoke traveled is a company of ghosts on the breeze. Little flickers of flame danced their triumph in a circle about him. "Mommy!" He yelled in panic.

************

Air

Kruger opened the door to the shop wide, much as he always did. Customers were his bread and butter, despite the other activities he'd involved himself in. The biggest difference today was the child that rode his shoulders like a prince on a pony. He scooped Niko up off his shoulders and set him on the floor of the shop. "Today, I have so much help that nothing will stop me!" He squatted down to give the boy the biggest hug he'd ever given, or maybe it was the same but seemed like more because of where they were. Either way he wore a huge grin. "Wander around a bit, I need to see to the forge fires. Touch, but be very careful, much of what I have is very sharp. Keep fingers away from edges and palms on the flat sides....but I do want you to touch them, and see what you feel."

After the hug, Niko flexed his boyish muscles to prove his might in the helping category. Permission to wander" He jumps at the chance. Almost literally. It was a hopping turn and straight to the row of daggers. They appealed to him more than the large swords, spears, halberds, shields, and more. His father had said not to touch the edges, but he wanted to — had to. He was careful, but he needed to test the whisper of keen blade against the strength and fragility of his flesh. And where that stopped and started.

There was a metal garden rake in his hands, as he unbanked the coals. and spread them like so much tar or concrete across the base of the forge. He didn't need to see the boy to know what was happening. Kruger had given up much in order to be named master of his forges. Gone was the voice of the wind as he walked the streets, but in its place a keen sense of everything happening within the forge itself. He kept his voice calm, startling the boy would only end up in blood and tears. "Mind those edges son. It wouldn't do to blood the weapons on someone so young as you." The rake moved, back and forth leaving an even coating of coals with which to work. "Come here son....there are things you need to see to understand."

Niko was not startled, nor did he fear the edges — as maybe he should —, but at his father's call, he dutifully went over, inhaling deeply when he went by the forge. It smelled comforting.

Kruger lowered his hand for Niko to grab. "Knowledge must be earned. Climb up me, and I will give you a secret." It wouldn't be the typical secret, more like something known by smiths everywhere, and assumed by laymen. But assumptions don't make for truths, and truth was all he was willing to give Niko today. This outing was important on many levels to the smith, and the highest of them was the well being of the boy he was reaching for.

Like a tree, Niko used Kruger's hand as the first branch and then set his way up to get close for the secret. A secret! He chewed his bottom lip, wide eyed, leaning in to hear it.

Kruger had expected the lean for the secret. He kissed Niko's forehead and whispered lightly. "This isn't a telling secret. It's a learning one. Reach and touch the bellows." They were there just over his father's shoulder. Kruger dropped his other arm beneath Niko to give him a sturdy place to sit. He spoke again, though he wasn't whispering now. He did keep his voice low so that he wasn't too loud. Niko was right there after all. "Close your eyes. Dad is going to work them, listen son, feel and hear if you can. Today when we are finished, I will know things about you, and you will know them about yourself." It was a promise, but it was one that he was sure would be true at the days end.

"Huh?" Because it seemed Daddy was talking in riddles. But he did what he was told. Making sure to not lean too far, he reached out to touch the bellows and closed his eyes, listening. Peeking a moment, too, because it is a little frightening not to see what might be about to happen.

Kruger reached his free hand upwards, grasping the handle attached to the chain. It in turn was attached to the bellows. He pulled , the rhythm timed to his own breathing. He was very calm, if intent on imparting some of the most important lessons he believed he could show Niko today. "Tell me, and do not lie....Mommy and daddy can take the truth, but lying is for people that live in shame and hide themselves. Can you hear the voices of the air in the pump of the bellows?" Kruger could, it was the core of who he was. It was the first of the elements he'd ever heard because the air is everywhere, and he was still an infant in small clothes when they first whispered the secrets of the world.

That peeking eye is turned back to his father, but he just realizes he gave his peeking away. Oh no! Still, as if he would lie. Did his father not know him at all" He did close his eyes fully this time, scrunched tight, listening as hard as he could. But it wasn't really listening with his ears. Of a sudden, it as like he was covered in a blanket, in a room, outside an auditorium. There were...it would be voices he was sure, but they were far away, muffled, unclear. "No, Daddy. I hear...hums." He was sure that disappointed his father, and his shoulders slumped.

"Good....very good son. Now here is another secret for being honest with me. You may open your eyes, but only until I need you to close them once more." Kruger turned his attention to Niko, his eyes fastening on the boys face like iron to a magnet. "You are not me. I have heard the voice of the air since the moment I was born. It was the first I had heard in this world, before my mother or father. Before the doctor who delivered me. It is, and always shall be the first language I ever learned. But you are not me, and that does not need to be so for you. In fact, I would have been surprised if it were. We are the same, but separated by our heritage. and I will help you or I will destroy the world in trying to." Perhaps Niko could tell the difference between Daddy, and Captain Krugey of the Dread Pirate Ship Anvil. Maybe it was too soon. "Keep your eyes open son, Daddy is going to work the bellows, but I want you to stop listening for the air, and watch the fires below." His arm pumped away, slow and steady like his own breathing. The forge could be a part of his body.

Setting his jaw, it jutted forward a little, mouth a thin line. Determined to make his father proud, if his father was proud of him, that would keep him close. Niko approached the forge, tongs out, but the heat did not bother him. With the fevers, one would think the heat should, but it felt like an embrace. Still, he could hear now, the sounds too sweet. She was trying too hard, and he kept his distance. He reached in with the tongs, drawing out a golden, glowing coal. "I have to," he whispered to the fire's words, and he stepped back. It was strangely hard to do so. Niko looked down at his feet and stepped away again, as if molasses were thick around his ankles.

Kruger wasn't angry, but he did call to Nko. "Don't dawdle son. I know what she wants, she will live many days and nights without that ember. Come and see what I have to show you!" It was a command, though gentle by the standards which Kruger had been taught. "There is so much wonder under these roofs." He meant all forges. Any place that was making, was almost sacred to him. "Come and see. We have far to go!"

"I'm trying, Daddy," he frowned up at Kruger with all the indignation he could muster. Couldn't he see he was trying" With a grunt and twist, as if tangled by roots, he finally got free of the nothing that bound him and moved over with the careful treatment of the coal. It had its own voice, and Niko smiled to it.

Kruger only peripherally observed Niko. He knew the boy's struggle, and then pointedly ignored it as a means to get Niko to ignore it too. If that meant he was the bad guy so be it, but Niko would leave the forge today having seen, and heard far more than he had any other time. It was but a step in the process that Kruger thought necessary to instruct him. "Very good! You are such a smart boy." It may have started off as something comical, but Kruger believed it into his soul. Niko was, and would be brilliant.

The beam of pride at the praise, comical or not, was high powered. He puffed up his little chest, stood his hero pose with feet apart, ready to take on the world — and holding a tong with a bright coal. "What do I do next' What's it for?"

Kruger put out his hand. He wrapped it around Niko's. "Watch, listen....do not breath or do anything that would be mistaken for action by the flames." The unlit coal was now held by the second set of tongs. "Are you far enough away from the forge that you only hear the one?" He waited, it was important that nothing influence the boy except reality.

Niko took a moment, tilting his head, and then moved around to the other side of the bench. And then a step away. "There. I can't hear the others now."

He held the lit coal close to Niko. Close enough that he could hear the fires calls to him. Kruger took the unlit coal and touched it to the lit one. "Fire, it spreads, son. Fire does something else, and I think this is what?s happening." the coal sputtered at first and then it flared to life. Quick as a flash Kruger doused the original, and lifted it from the bath to steam itself dry. "Niko....fires forget." Then he put the now unlit coal next to the one he'd just allowed to flare to life, and let Niko judge if the flames had forgotten the rules of survival.

It was all so fast. The bloom of the coal, the other one dousing, the two together. Niko felt a whirl, "Forgets." He repeated. Setting hands to his knees, he leaned over to peer at the coal. "It's new. It doesn't know there is more. It doesn't know."

"Exactly. Take the coals back to the fires, let them both rejoin the forge wholly. But I want you to come back here because we need to talk with the brine in the bath as well." Kruger offered the second set of tongs to Niko, knowing that they spoke as separate entities. He needed to understand, and it seemed to him the only way was to let him hear it for himself.

"Yes, sir." Quick to the task, again going to the fire easier than going away. The coals seemed gleeful in their sound and then the individuality is gone, the voice evoking a sigh of delight at the extra fuel and instantly tempting for more. Niko frowned at it and said, likely to his father's pleasure or chagrin, "Saucy minx," and was back to his father's side in a dash.

"What you are Niko, This is my fault, though it is nothing I can control, just as controlling the fires is an illusion. The waters....their voice is probably as muted as the air's voice. Alone you will not hear them the same way. You were born of Fire son. I don't know where that resides within you. Only you can feel and see. Only now are you big enough to understand what it wants and what it needs. Fire is the hardest to deal with. She's so warm and beautiful, and makes us want to give her all she asks for. But, fire cannot really be controlled. Those who try can only contain it, or extinguish it. We, you and I, we can speak directly to it. We can make it remember. Fire forgets. Your fevers are made from fire. You are the container. You have yet to know how to set the fire free or use it when it has appeared. That's just because of our age. One day you will call upon it at will and I will no longer be able to help you. I will see you trained though." He peered at the bath. What happened to the fires when they hit the water" They fizzled, and died. They need air. You have it, and they seek to consume it all. Show the fire what happens when all the air is gone. Tell it, visualize what you have seen and show it. This is how you will manage the fire within. I don't know what it looks like or where it lives. Search yourself, and find it. Teach it to co exist with you, rather than consuming you too."

Niko listened to all his father had to say. There were many things said. From it came two deep hearted truths: he was born of fire and he could speak to it. That his father had said he could not control it, that was tucked into a corner of his mind not as a fret or a fear: a challenge. But he had to find the fire within still. He had to speak to it, convince it to not take away him and lose everything.

Kruger put one hand beneath Niko's to help hold the sword, the other demonstrated exactly how sharp the edge was. The smith ran his palm along the blade until crimson appeared. He watched his son the entire time, not wincing or crying out as the blade bit into him. He just closed his fist tightly and held it between them. "Metal comes from the earth, it is in the stones of the mountains and has to be extracted with fire. But how did it get there?" He turned his fist over and placed it on top of Nikolai's hands, opening it so that the blood was touching the metal. "The fire is in my blood" and in my feelings. It'll remind the steel. Close your eyes Niko."

The blood did not alarm him, not exactly, but his head did draw back just a little. Daddy had a reason to do that, he was sure. The fire is in his blood, right, so the blood".He closed his eyes like he was told, and trying so hard not to peek. His eyelids fluttered a little, and he scrunched them tight to keep them closed. There was so much around him, in him, that he could still feel or smell. Maybe he did not need to see right then. Like when it was dark at night, and he could still smell the jasmine from the garden — or could. It was past time for them blooming, but that was what it was like. He could smell the wood, the metals, the heat. He could feel the heat, too, and the warming of the blade in his hands. Sweating hands, but he did not want to take his hands away to wipe them on his trousers. He stood still, holding the sword with Daddy, and eyes now closed without scrunching, just feeling, smelling, and listening.

Kruger watched Nikolai struggle with not being able to look around. It was to be expected from someone so young. He let go of Niko's hands long enough to flick a fingernail against the flat of the blade out near the tip. It sent a quivering vibration through the length of metal. Vibration was the key with the earth. It felt its experiences. He placed his hand once more over the boy's and closed his own eyes. It was like they'd never shut their eyes, though things did not look quite the same. Outlines became visible as a bell tone sounded, a man worked with a hammer, bringing it hard down onto them. It was the two of them, Kruger made his awareness visible to Nikolai. They were two parts of the same piece of steel, fitting as it was an alloy formed from iron and carbon. The scene played for them, in reverse. The sword in Niko's hand choosing uncharacteristically to begin at the end. The outline that worked it would be recognizable to Nikolai as that of his father.

The images changed, they were there, a thick sheet of steel that was as long as one of the train cars that ran through the city. Every bump of the train's wheels sent a quiver through the steel and Nikolai would get images of the world at large as the train moved from the city, backwards towards the mountains. Heat came next, tremendous heat that set the steel to melting. The process going backwards and molten steel became Iron ore, and carbon dust. Niko and Kruger followed along, passengers on the many carts that rolled the iron back through the mountain where men, short but men nonetheless, worked pickaxes to free the vein of Iron from the walls inside the mountain.

Then there was nothing but the occasional rumble as the earth jerked and bucked around it. It was like this for time unmeasured. Eons where nothing happened, and there was no light.The quakes came again, greater this time than ever they had been as a mountain was born, or in this case as it slid back into the earth. Another long pause of patience building darkness, then came the fires. They were everywhere, the entire surface of the world was one great sea of molten slag. Everything burned, the very elements themselves were nothing but fuel to the fire which created the planet. Long they drifted, just one swirling mass of iron in a sea of so many other things. That was after the explosion"

Kruger pulled his hand away from weapon and boy, severing the connection. There were some things that it was too soon to see for him. The smith had seen it countless times, from metals which had come from places far beyond just this one planet. All of them saw the beginning the same way. He didn't know if Nikolai was ready for it. He was breathing a bit harder, it took effort to break the connection short. "Fire has the power to change the entire world, or smaller parts and even the entire planet could fall to it again. Earth has its limits, but those limits on that scale. Niko, they are vast. Easily able to accept what you have to offer, or at least they think so until they fail. This is not what you did, or what I think you will do. It was simply the best way I could think of to show you what fire unchecked will accomplish. Eventually the fires died, if they hadn't the blade wouldn't exist in its current form. I don't know your limits, but be aware of what can happen. It can because it has, and it likely will again. This isn't meant to scare you. It's meant to help you understand that everything has its limits. Fire can test those limits until the moment the fire reaches its own limits."

Kruger wrapped the palm he'd just cut in a t-shirt bandage. "Push your limits, Niko, but be aware of the consequences."

As the sequence rippled back through time, Niko's jaw went slack in wonder. He leaned back a little against Daddy, needing a firm foundation to face what he saw. It was all so much, too much, and yet Niko did not tremble or quake as the earth did in the vision. No, he was the fire. A great fire was part of him, his unwavering friend and greatest enemy. Was he a white hat or a black hat' Maybe a grey hat' The grey of ashes. He did not like that. He wanted to be good. Be a hero. If the fire won, if he let it go to its limits burning everything in its path, he could not be that.

Niko looked up at Daddy, sweat a soft shimmer on his brow, and pouted. "What if I don't want it?"

It was a good question, one that made Kruger smile if a little sadly. "I would say that makes you a very smart boy. It's a lot of responsibility, but I think that you understand things now. I think that not wanting it is a good thing, and likely the best reason for you to have it. It's part of you, and someday you will need it. Just remember, Nikolai, it is better to have it and not need it than not have it when you really need it." He leaned over and kissed the top of the boy's head. "I showed you that, not because I think that is what you will do, or even something that you could do. What you saw happened, but the fires receded, the world recovered. It was necessary for it to happen in order to put us here. Without it there would be no sword, no time for any of us. Fire that consumes, is also rebirth in many cases. There are forests where the trees grow tall, they drop their seed pods to the earth, but those pods need the fire to open them." It was true that the old ones needed to pass so that the new could flourish. Kruger didn't say that to the boy, he would understand it over time as well.

Niko's jaw went sideways, mouth scrunched up with the kiss to the top of his head. Daddy said more about the good of fire, and he thought about it. While he thought, his fingers twisted at the hem of his shirt, twisting and twisting. Soon his fingers were caught in the cloth. He tugged them loose. Wiggling fingers rubbed harsh along his pant leg and then reached to take Daddy's hand. "It's not like in the fairy tales," he concluded from his thoughts. "Will my teacher be an old wizard with a really long beard" Because that'd be bad. It might catch on fire. He shouldn't wear a robe either. Maybe?," but he gave a little stomp and shake of his head. That thought he stopped cold, and did not say it. "Okay," he straightened his shoulders, set his feet, and took up his best mighty warrior pose.

"I haven't decided yet who will teach you." He had plenty of thoughts on the matter, but couldn't really bring himself to accept what he thought would be best. "I might've asked your grandmother if she were around." She wasn't, and really what did he expect after having been gone so long" "But do not worry, I will find someone when the time is right." For now he would give Nikolai as much knowledge as he could and bring the boy safely into each coming day. "Use this as you want for a while, get to know the metals and how they react. I will only have one more lesson for you today, and then we can go have some fun."

Releasing Daddy's hand, he claimed the metal "toy' once more. The fall and rise of his shoulders coincided with the idea of another lesson and then fun. "What fun" Are we gonna go sailing the seas" Search for buried treasure" Say, you probably can really do that. Stick your hands in the dirt and can feel for gems and such. Are we rich' Do you find gems and stuff" Can you make them' Carter said gems are made from heat and rock. Can I make gems" I'll be rich, too!"