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It was a lovely day for travelling.
The sky was clear, and the merry breeze that whistled around you tugged on the ends of your hair like a spoiled child. You shake your head to flick the strands away from your eyes, excitement building like a growing hurricane. The winds are strong today.
You took a step, then another, and then another, until the west wind gathered beneath your soles carried you into the air. Like a mother’s touch, their intangible fingers threaded through your hair, and you smiled at their ministrations. It really was a lovely summer day, and the warm breeze tickled your cheeks like a kiss.
Just as you were beginning to doze off, allowing the west wind to carry you wherever they wished, a new breeze rushed to you, carrying with it an acrid scent of smoke. Your eyes open again, even as the draft howled by your ears.
Fire… fire…
The softest murmur, the voice of the wind only wind spirits born of them could hear.
"Where?" You asked the breeze.
North… north… wild fire… spirit… strong
A wild fire large enough to birth a spirit? This you had to see.
Making a request to the wind keeping your body aloft, you felt a gust of air pushing your body towards north, where the great shrublands laid out for miles.
Before you even got close, you could spot the brilliant glow.
As if a starved animal, a large wildfire was hungrily eating up the dry brush, growing even larger as it went. In the center of it all, like a beacon, was a fire spirit dressed in brilliant orange robes of flickering flames.
It was a beautiful one, with soft and delicate features, even though fire spirits were not known for their fragility. Its eyes were a captivating hue, the colour of molten gold, and its pale skin glowed like the rays of the sun had bestowed upon it all of their benediction. But madness currently danced in those eyes as it rampaged across the shrublands, urged on by the roaring of the wildfire that followed it like an obedient pet. The fire it was born of had grown too large too quickly and was out of control; likewise, it too could not hold back its innate desire to destroy.
You watched, in mild dismay and not a little bit of horror, as it stretched out a pair of lovely hands and wrapped them gently around the trunk of a stout bush in a gruesome imitation of a lover’s caress, reducing the poor thing and the vegetation around it to nothing more than cinders and ash. It moved like it was dancing, whirling from place to place with no clear directive, hair and robes twirling and leaping like the flames they were born of. You were mesmerised, watching this beautiful creature wreak havoc and destruction.
It was deadly. It was mad. It was beautiful.
Enraptured, you unconsciously flick a finger and urged the flames higher, bigger, brighter. In the next moment, sensing another spirit’s interference, the fire spirit looked up and straight at you, a wildfire in its eyes.
In that moment, you might have fallen in love.
And then, in your daze, you felt a coldness on your nose. Water.
From above, dark clouds had gathered at some point, and a water spirit was glaring down at the fire with hatred.
Ah, but of course. Water spirits hated fire spirits. It was no wonder it would try and snuff this one out.
The howling winds stirred up by the oncoming storm brought with it a madness as well. The anger the water spirit felt, you could almost taste it like a bitter tingle on your tongue. This fire had dried up a small pond, and the weak water spirit of that pond had evaporated with it. This water spirit was the child of a roaring river, and had treated the weak one as a dear friend. Now it was here for vengeance.
Strong as the wildfire was already, it was newly-born, and did not know how to temper itself, how to endure the crusade of the rains attempting to snuff it out.
Fire spirits have always been at the mercy of water.
But oh, you couldn’t let that happen, not to such a beautiful creature. Swift as the gales, as the rain came crashing down, each droplet a cannonball to batter the flames into oblivion, you snatched up a dry branch and called upon the wind as a shield.
As the fire spirit let out a wordless yell and came crashing to the earth, its skin losing its lustre and its robes growing dark, you touched the branch to a small flame that still danced weakly in the crevice between two boulders and coaxed it on.
The fire spirit, still so beautiful yet every bit as brittle as it looked now, looked at you, with a dull gaze and none of the life that had been in there only moments prior. The edges of its fluttering clothing were flickering, and its pale skin was now also partly due to its translucency. Spirits faded when they died, leaving not a body behind, and this spirit was on the cusp of.
You wrap an arm around its waist and hastened the winds to leave, as the livid water spirit turned its wrath on you. But no water spirit can ever catch up to a wind spirit, even one carrying a burden.
After you sequestered your treasure safely in the hollow of a dried out tree a long distance away, you gathered a pile of leaves, and allowed the tiny flame to eat.
As the fire spirit’s eyes slowly filled with light, it blinked once, twice, and turned a suspicious gaze on you. Now that its madness had receded, it looked even more stunning with clarity flickering in its eyes.
"Who are you?" It asked, in a warm voice like the crackle of flames on a log.
You smiled and replied, voice like the tinkle of wind chimes in the fall breeze.
"I am the spirit of the Autumn Wind, and I believe I just saved your life."