Unsent Letter to Jasmine, Written Approximately 26/02, Recreated Here
Spica
Metadata
Reference Number: BICI/SSP/CRJ1004/018
Title: Unsent Letter to Jasmine, Written Approximately 26/02, Recreated Here
Author: Spica
Date: Written approximately 26/02, Year 5607 A. o. W.
Extent: One letter, four pages long
To Jasmine, the first of my secret-keepers:
Training has been progressing terribly. I end each day exhausted to the bone. My muscles are torn to shreds from endless drills. My skin burns from the lingering tinge of magic I know I am not equipped to handle. And my heart is broken to pieces, each jagged shred a reminder of how I’ve wronged you.
This sword is my constant plague. Ash says, with no small amount of effort, that I am picking it up quickly considering my unique situation. I force myself to keep moving even as he belittles me under his breath. My magic is still as poor as ever, and my spirits worse. The only thing I am picking up quickly are my sword skills, abysmal as they still are.
I am not meant to be here. I wish I could leave. Sometimes, before I fall into terrible dreams, I linger on that fantasy: of packing my bag, leaving this sword behind, and finding somewhere else in the world to take shelter in, far away from this place. But there is nowhere in the world that His Eternal Warmth cannot see. No crevice in the world that his Flame-Feeder cannot drag me out of.
The Flame-Feeder… did you know of her true identity? I fancied myself a scholar who studied the Undying Embers, back in Seabreeze Shoal. I realize now I was nothing more than a child who chipped away at an ugly rock and declared it a grand statue.
For all the books I read, for all the lessons I begged from Pina and Deodar and every Wandering Ember willing to spare me the time of day, I failed to learn one simple fact: The Flame-Feeder’s real name.
Jasmine… Fir is the Flame-Feeder. I am not just the protege of a senior Undying Ember.
I am to become His Eternal Warmth’s new voice proselytizing His will to humanity. Of all the people in the world, me.
The next Flame-Feeder.
I feel so stupid. Of course Fir is the Flame-Feeder. His Eternal Warmth’s blessing flows through every part of her: I’ve seen that since the very beginning. Of course her uniform is nothing at all like the familiar orange breastplate and long black robes nearly every other Undying Ember I’ve ever seen wears. She still wears the same black shoulderplates, but instead of armor and robes, she wears a thin green dress. Why bother with cumbersome armor when the blessing of The Keeper of the Forge is more than enough?
I now understand why she always spoke of where we might go next, after my time at the Tending Grounds. She wishes for me to travel the world with her so that I may come to understand the world I will one day oversee.
Why me? I am Fir’s junior, yes, but only by a dozen years or so. Maybe fifteen, if I am being especially generous. I’ve heard His Eternal Warmth can lengthen the lifespan of particularly faithful disciples, and I can’t think of a more faithful disciple than His Flame-Feeder. Given that, she may be in her mid-40’s… but still, wouldn’t she want a teenaged apprentice? One more moldable than I?
And my skills…
Yesterday was a particularly grueling training session. With magic, Ash can move objects around as if they were alive. He sent a dozen straw dummies after me, animated by smoke and sparks, and told me to defeat them all with only magic. I failed miserably. I’m supposed to channel His Eternal Warmth’s magic through this cursed sword, but I can’t do it. The magic won’t flow no matter how hard I try.
I am disconnected from the fire’s heat. I live in cold breezes. How could I ever stoke a flame?
The dummies advanced on me. They knocked my sword out of my grip. They sent me cowering to the ground. I curled into a ball to better shield myself from their strikes, crying, but they still wouldn’t relent.
“Pick up your sword and fight, you cowardly child!” Ash shouted at me. His face is often red from rage when we are together. The sight haunted my mind’s eye, even as my eyes stayed squeezed shut.
“I can’t! Please, make them stop! Let me quit!”
“You’d be dead if this were a real fight! Now get up and destroy them!” he screamed, his voice hoarse.
I was at my limit. The weight of everything I had done caught up to me. This felt not like a gift, but like divine punishment.
“No! Let them kill me!” I screamed. Ash must have called them off, as the blows soon stopped. That did not ebb my sorrow. I laid there, nothing more than an infant taking her first breath in the world, and I cried.
“Kill me,” I sobbed.
Kill me, kill me, kill me… it was a litany flowing from my lips. Like one of Blossom’s strange songs, twisted beyond repair.
“I don’t know what the Flame-Feeder could possibly see in you,” Ash spat.
I didn’t know either. I still don’t know. What is there to see in me, besides disappointment and loss?
Eventually my litany ended, and I found my mind returning to me once again. I slowly uncurled my body. Each movement felt like the first I had ever made, muscles stiff from disuse. Ash sat in a chair nearby — one that I distinctly remembered not having been there before — and watched me with utter disgust. I was a bug he had yet to squish. Nothing more.
“Did you truly receive a Spark?” he asked me.
“It wasn’t worth the cost.”
I looked up at him, then, and saw nothing but resentment in his eyes. “I’ve known children, no older than twelve, who left behind everything they had ever known with more courage than you. So you left home. You can convince the Flame-Feeder to let you return in less than two weeks. What is there to cry about?”
Leaving was not what broke me. That hurt, but it did not tear me in two. No… I once thought I could not survive leaving you, and I have come to realize that I could have.
But what I can’t survive… and why I can’t go back… I told him. I told him everything. It was the first time I had spoken the truth, and every word tore my throat to shreds as it left me.
Ash listened in quiet contemplation. And for the very first time I saw his gaze soften towards me.
It was a long time before he spoke.
“Undying Embers aren’t required to prove their worthiness for a Spark. It goes against one of our fundamental principles. His Eternal Warmth sees the potential in every person who has yet to be sparked by His holy flame. That’s what the Spark is. It ignites you. This test you speak of… more likely than not, it wasn’t a test at all. Knowing the Flame-Feeder, she simply wanted your company.”
And that, Jasmine, may hurt more than anything else. I am being made a fool, or a trophy, or a pet. I don’t know which one yet.
But I know that you did not deserve this.
It is one thing to accept my folly. There is a game being played here, and if I were the lone piece being moved across the board, then perhaps I would take this manipulation as my absolution. I am not the only piece. You and I are shuffled across a board whose shape I cannot see.
I do not have the strength to fight for myself. But if allowing myself to be someone else’s pawn means protecting you, then a pawn I shall be.
There is something new in me. I am loathe to call it a flame, but it is a kind of burning all the same. I cannot die here. I cannot let myself falter anymore.
I will stay here, Jasmine. Until I know exactly what game we were thrown into, I must stay.
This cannot heal the wounds I have given you. But at the very least, perhaps I can stop the bleeding.
Yours, though I can no longer claim that title,
Spica