The land is still far, and there's no stop for where their skiff could lay. The three wanderers were on the verge of starvation as the day reached closer to dusk. Not only was it the fourth day of the apocalypse, but the three wanderers were slowly losing their appetites for truth.
"Looks like a lot of yield from a wise one." Cyrus teases, fingers reeling in the fishing reel out of the water. No fish earned from his reason.
"Oh, so funny, Cyrus. Let's see if your fishing rod catches even one from here. Now start the stove for me."
"What stove?" Cyrus looks left and right, all oceans to see.
The three wanderers are hungry, but luckily the librarian yields three fish—one for each to feed on. However, the three wanderers are once again stuck with another dilemma. The fishes are too raw, and they have nothing to cook them here.
The skiff stops on another part of the ocean, as the three wanderers question themselves. The fishes are lying on their boat, jumping and wriggling their fins while they try to avoid the three wanderers. Without a fire, they cannot make these fish edible and sullen. Moreover, the fishes are starting to smell.
"What do we do then? Do we have anything to cook?" Eve holds the fishes steady. If only there were a cleaver to chop them to death.
"We have oil from the lantern, right? We can spare those to cook them!" Cyrus suggests, eyes on the treasure behind Charger. There's more than enough oil for that.
"No way! I needed this when the night comes!"
They do not have enough resources in their skiff to make a fire—a shame that they didn't prepare much before leaving. Those who wanted a perfect meal know a raw and saltwater fish couldn't satisfy. The only way to make these fishes edible is to create a fire themselves to cook it.
However, the wanderers have their own thoughts about making a fire. Their wisdom—they have it differently. The cleric, the librarian, and the Tin Man could not cooperate with each other as they wanted the fire for themselves.
"Alright, what if we make our own, then? I'll need some help with a direct view of the sun above my head." Cyrus rubs his hands, warming them for a heat.
"Why? So you can further our suffering? Let's just find some woods and sticks. They'll burn the fastest." Eve suggests, hands on the skiff.
"No way! You're getting my skiff sinking for that! Let's just cast upon a fire instead." Charger denies, stopping Eve's hands from reaching the skiff's skin.
The question began—what is fire? They wander for the definition through a convolution. Doubting as much as they believe themselves, the fire that supposedly burned their fishes now burned in their hearts.
Fire has been gone from their town for a long time, and now they do not know fire as much as a caveman living in the darkness for a long time. But their fights are broken down by a peace—A dare to be precise. Why waste another word from your tongue when it can be sharpened into something else?
"Woah! Woah! Alright! Alright! Why don't we just..."
"Why don't we just make a fire on our own again? Wanna settle a score again?" Eve teases.
"Sure! Anything but ruining this boat into scrap thanks to you, people!" Charger holds on the steering wheel.
"So, how do we start it then? Who's first?" Cyrus drops the fishes.
A new challenge began—one definition of fire. With the three wanderers on their thoughts, they must challenge themselves by proving the idea of fire on their skiff. The prize goes to who can define it the best—the well-cooked and the most satisfied fish to have ever been cooked.
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The challenge began with the cleric. His faith in the sun puts him in the first place to set up a pyre. He carried a glass of shard, raising sticks into a pyre where it could be close to the sun. The afternoon sun is hot enough above his head, and he could feel the strand of his hair smoking.
"Fire..." Cyrus mumbled as he aimed the glass shard above the wooden pyre.
"Fire is the source of life, the source of creation, and where things began."
"Our making starts with the fire, our blood warms with fire, and our thoughts are moulded to remember the fire."
His pyre is a set of twigs piling into the tallest, fitting the desire of his achievement and devotion. However, truly setting a fire on these sticks would require him to enlighten them through a magnifying glass of reason—his wisdom. The ever-gracing sun, the invisible barrier of a sky, and the mortally questioning lives—the three matters standing in the cleric's presence.
"Through the years, fire gave us many things. Not only are we warmed, protected, and enlightened through its path during the darkest night, but we are also given a reason."
"The fire burns because it carries a reason. The reason why it must burn among the void of the Universe, leading all of us to exist here. Were it not for the fire, then where would we be?"
The glass hardened, and his works began to appear evident. The sun reflected its light into the glass, piercing through the invisible barrier and left the woods to shimmer with only a dot of it. But one dot of the sun is hot enough to set a warming greeting for the dying twigs, whose fate is already sealed with death.
"As I stand here, years under its reign, the sun had never left the world and its people. Somewhere, it sleeps...dreaming of a warm world and seeding the thoughts of humans with stars."
"And somewhere, it awakens...watching over the living being who carries its fire into the future. For there would never be a corner where the sun could not shimmer upon."
Something warms within these woods. As the cleric fuels his sticks with his faith, the sound of peeling wood skin can be heard faintly from his hands. The dust of these trees resembles the spirit that had fought for the right to exist, only to soon follow one simple purpose.
"Here, you are not seeing the twigs. You are seeing the body of a plant that held its spirit fierce. Years of existence, and the tree lost its twigs to our hands against its will."
"So what did I do? I let it embrace death. I let the creation meet its creator once more, providing them with merciful and painless death—Or at a least painful death."
Smokes appear from the glass, and the cleric's work is finally finished after long minutes of patience. It flies high, as the smell of roasted tree can be smelled right through the librarian and the cleric's nose.
"Thus, we make this pyre to let these woods know life. They will burn from their creator's fingerprint, and their spirits will rise into the flame and their bodies decayed into ashes—a perfect purpose for their existence."
"Rise high, and leave low. That is fire."
Hiss. The fire ignites. After half an hour of waiting and hearing the chatter of the cleric, his fire slowly ignites from the two sticks he rubbed together. But they weren't enough, and the fire is only a newborn. All that waiting and reassurance gave a little gift.
"So, we're really waiting for that? Really?"
"What? It works! Patience is the key, my friend." Cyrus drops the sticks, feeling proud of himself.
"Good, leave it to the professional, then." Eve pushes the pyre away, nearly dropping Cyrus' work to nothingness as she demonstrates hers.
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Now it is time for the wise librarian to demonstrate her work. The wise librarian carried upon sticks and stones, two things that could be burned with ease, as nature intended and lawfully made. Only through this way will the fire be born without waiting.
"You praise a fire too much, priest. Yet I haven't seen the painful truth of their scorching grip on us." Eve said, grabbing one of Cyrus's rags from his robe.
"Hey! Ask first!" Cyrus covers his chest.
"Have you thought that fire who gave life to us also harm us? Such pain from our creator. Isn't that ironic?"
The librarian shed more skins from the tree's twigs, revealing more of its pure white skin from within. Its flesh is pale white, ugly as it is outside, but fresher than a corpse.
"The heat we had, the fire we were given, yet we died when we touched it. Perhaps there's something important within its existence—a warning."
"Maybe the fire is the purest wisdom, the form of ancient voice beyond our reach, meant not to be reached. We were made with it? Or maybe we were made to avoid it?"
However, the twigs didn't last long. They shattered under the pressure, and the librarian had no choice but to use the rocks instead. The remnants of the sticks became what to ignite the fire from the rocks.
"For the fire to be made so mighty, they must be made to be feared. A leash to keep us all controlled and taught properly. Lest we are all doomed in our pride for the fire." Eve rubs the two rocks fiercely. A few sparks and the sound of two minerals crushing feel satisfying for her to hear.
"We are not free of pain, and fire itself is not free of mortality. Eventually, it must died when there's no air around. Just like us..."
The librarian tried harder, but nothing came out. Yet the rocks remain strong, for they cannot birth fire from being rubbed together, no matter how much strength the librarian puts.
"It taught us the importance of knowing your limitations, your lives, and your importance based on the irrefutable restriction of your physical form."
"You will be burned because you cannot resist it. You will be decayed because you cannot deny it. You will be left in ashes because you have been used. Each purpose brings you closer to your end."
In the end, the librarian wasted her time rubbing two stones until her hands started to bleed from the coarse surface. It was a waste of energy, just like this fire in her hands. These fires are a false sense of hope, which cannot be burned further by misleading. Thus, the librarian stops.
"I burn these sticks and stones through the realisation and wisdom. My stones are cracking, but they haven't faltered, no matter how many times I rubbed them." Eve stops
"Yet my sticks have weakened, left me hopeless with the stones to crack. Somehow, I haven't yet to burn them..."
"The sticks are weak, died so easily, and yet it hasn't made me a fire. Such weakness, such life...and for what? The lifeless stones outlast the living. Perhaps the fire desire the strongest, not the reasonable..."
It is not a defeat. The librarian simply concedes as she wishes not to fall further into this misleading and hurtful attempt. Even if the cleric has achieved his success with one fish on the fire, the librarian accepts her defeat, for she would rather not be misled again with a wounded hand.
"Then I'll take the limitation with grace, my dear librarian." Cyrus said, keeping the fire steady from spreading through the boat.
"For I am enlightened through fire, either by its blessing or curse. Here, I am blessed now."
"Eve, is it my turn?" Charger awaits with his fish.
"Go ahead. Play your tune for me, my friend." Eve said, looking at the remnants of her wood with disdain.
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The last round goes for the Tin Man. His presence appears calming and impatient to set a fire, but he has no tools to make even a spark. One can say that, as free as he was, he was also free from any understanding and rationality. Though his spirit was elsewhere, perhaps his thought was still here.
"You two made it look like fire was holding you back. But let me tell you something." Charger holds onto his antenna, charging the fire through his magic.
"You see it as something more to affect you than you do to affect it. You are obstructing yourself with its design. But me? I simply could not be influenced by its warmth."
The Tin Man didn't do much, only showing his lesson. He stood like an old man lecturing the librarian and the cleric about fire. In his words, so many things are made out of exaggeration and self-boasting.
"Fire is out of my existence, or my concern. May it burn as it wishes, but as long as it doesn't come upon my duty. It has no place for me, not to tell me what it is."
"I hold the match, but it doesn't hold my charge. Only the darkness does, but even only to halt me my progress. Fire is simply what caresses my skin and left knowing it hasn't yet to find something to burn in me."
He continues with more bragging and stories about his greatness, turning the meaning of fire from the meaning of his adventure. The librarian had never seen such vanity, which explains much of the Tin Man's survivability and unbreakable will to fall from the Gold Creek's demise.
"I have gone for days, months and years. But fire is nothing of a might to me. I've seen light, but not the heat. I do not need the heat, I need only one thing..."
"I need the spark where it spreads, where it wants to travel more than the base it was ignited. I wanted it to live as a moving jolt of desire, keeping you moved in the world that moves faster than you."
The Tin Man unleashes his might on the wanderers through the power he has kept within him. From his tin horns, he cast a thunder to burn through the remnants of the librarian's sticks. A fire might have been struck so powerful from his horns that it could burn more than the pile of wood here.
"For I say, fire is how you made it a fire. Whether you find it a benefit or a threat it depends what lens you are seeing on it. But me? I see it as a little thing that has to cook my fishes ready."
"So I cast upon this fire from my charge, knowing it will burn because of its purpose. Otherwise, it wouldn't be here to burn at all. May it burn for me, so that it can complete its duty and return to ashes."
Boom! A flash of thunder appears towards the sticks, leaving only ashes but no fire. The Tin Man's method was too powerful; he couldn't measure his strength at the cost of his words. In the end, the pride of knowing ends with the flaw of self-empowerment.
"Oh, maybe it's too much?"
"I think I should've been more careful."
"You think?? I'm almost got deaf by you!" Eve yelled. Ears were ringing, and she couldn't hear well from the blast. Somehow, she survived that blast of thunder without bleeding her ears, but now she couldn't remove that ringing from her.
"Uhm...sorry..."
"Augh! My ears! I can't hear! Ouch...! Is it bleeding?" Cyrus yelled, his ears are also deafened.
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"So, who wins?" Charger awaits, his hands are cleaning the skiff with a rag.
"Definitely me. Can't you see whose fire cooks all of our fishes?"
The cleric ended the game fairly, bragging about his greatness as if he had won against the librarian many times. In the end, the three wanderers relied on the fire of reason made by the cleric's patience. The fire was warm, and the fishes immediately cooked well.
"Yum! What a fish! Lucky me..."
He won the freshest fish among the three, being the perfect and the tastiest until the bone. The librarian and the Tin Man could only eat half a raw fish before the taste of raw fish nearly made them puke. Turns out raw fish can't be cooked immediately without proper seasoning.
"Yuck! Ugh! I hate this!" Eve mumbled. "Cyrus, water! I need water!"
"We don't have water! Oh, wait...we do have! The free ocean! Haha!" Cyrus jokes.
"Don't worry, Eve. I got you covered." Charger pulls out a bottle of water from the skiff's hatch. So much water packed in bottles underneath.
"Wait, you have a ration?"
"Not for humans. Some of them are dangerous, just like fire." Charger replies.