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Fires can start in thousands of different ways. A single strike of lightning can consume the dry vegetation around it, growing into a beast that swallows anything that dares to stand in its way. Like a bewildered animal, it races with the wind it won’t rest until there is food in front of it, reshaping the world into something entirely new as the orange flames fed on whatever they could touch, object cracking under their unbearable heat becoming part of something greater.
What never changed that the fire would eventually go out, leaving behind nothing but the same, smouldering piles of ash and charred ground.
It was a fascinating, irreversible process. Its own kind of twisted alchemy.
What was once touched by fire would never be the same. Instead, it would be reborn as something new.
Yet, he found himself inching closer and closer, enjoying every ounce of warmth that seeped through the protective gear bringing back a feeling that he had lost in that fire all those years ago. The last embrace and the first miracle in his life. A life changing event that pushed him to a new discovery.
Humans did not burn like regular objects. Far too much life had been contained within them, far too many small miracles that withstood the all-devouring progress of fire. Tissues burn and melt together, spreading a peculiar stench along with the fire, first just a little bit but once the flames get to them, it’s hard to save them from their grasp as they grudgingly accept what they had stumbled into.
On quiet nights when the smallest of noises bring their phantoms along, Florian Brande closes his eyes, the perpetual smile fading from his lips as he turns to his side, facing the cold wall on the side of his bed. Despite the lack of fire around him, he swears he can hear the cracking of wood, the shattering glasses and the rumbling noise as something heavy collapses around him, bringing debris and dust down on his head.
The words of love his parents had told him become lost over the years and no matter what he does he cannot recall them. They remained with the memory of the fire morphing, merging, changing.
And that made flames into wonderful and terrifying lifeless creatures. No matter how many times he had summoned them to his world, the warmth he had felt on that day was only there in a hazy memory. So in the end flames became a tool in his hands seeking justice against those he had seen fit.
However, all fires were meant to be put out, their hunger quenched after they served their purpose by his hands. He started them and he ended them as he seemed fit, everything in order to fulfil his role as a miracle.
Or so he thought.
When Matthias Czernin appeared in front of him, for the first time in his life he had seen a work of art that was somehow salvaged by fire instead of being completely destroyed like everything else the man had known. Just like Florian, he was a miracle on his own, yet he couldn’t have been any more different. A husk of a man, broken beyond repair, picked apart by his own parents and pushed beyond his limit by his own lifeless doppelgänger. Someone who unconsciously persisted, despite repeatedly wishing demise upon himself.
A person not even fire wanted to welcome into its maw.
A twisted miracle.
Florian should have hated him. He should have made it his sole goal to destroy Czernin until nothing but ashes remain of him. After all, the man stood against his beliefs. His mere existence mocked the miracle and the warmth his parents had bestowed upon him on that day.
On the other hand, the more he looked at Matthias, the more he seemed to understand the strange trickery of fate. He was like a grey mouse, always scurrying away from attention whenever anyone tried to get closer to him, but still looking for a way to the light, leaning into conversations and human interactions when there was someone to carry the discussion. Almost as if he was never burdened by the marks that burned into his skin…
And that was what caught Florian off guard about that melancholic face. Other residents who had their life spared by fire were inevitably changed. The feelings that were hidden in the darkest parts of their heart came to the surface through their wounds, slowly poisoning everything around them, until they finally suffocated in their own misery.
Yet Matthias was different. The fire tore him apart, bit chunks out of his body along with one of his eyes and yet, he never seemed to blame it. In fact, he had blamed anything, but the fire that supposedly took everything from him. In those rare moments Florian managed to catch him in a solemn mood on nights when alcohol had finally untied the knot on his tongue and allowed his thoughts to escape through those damaged lips.
Past. Puppets. Freedom. Shadow. Louis.
Eventually, just like how flames change the world around them, Matthias’s words served as fuel to something new and devastating Florian had only experienced in passing, but never to this degree. Almost as if the match he had used to summon fire was dropped on his heart and took residence in his chest, burning steadily, intensifying depending on how close he was to the source. Almost as if Czernin was a sorcerer of old legends.
It was beautiful, mesmerizing yet devastating at the same time a fire that burned him to his very core, bringing him the phantom of the warmth his parents had bestowed upon him. It was old, yet something entirely new. A fire that burned without swallowing him whole. Flames that sent shivers down his spine the closer he had gotten to the puppeteer, and danced excitedly in his ribcage at the chance of having the man’s attention on him.
A miracle upon a miracle from a miracle.
Florian’s smile only widened as he realized what he had obtained.
Fires can start in thousands of ways, but sometimes it’s better to watch the flames flicker to life and envelop everything in their warm embrace.