So there's this game called The Path, created by Tale of Tales, and aside from the line below, is not really that relevant to the story below, but it is important to mention anyway, as it's a tale that can be interpreted by many people, and no two interpretations are the same. When I was watching Carmen's chapter played on youtube, I thought of Karen, and how in some ways, it could just as easily be her line as it was Carmen's. And this came to mind, after some work and some waiting.

It is mostly a character piece, it's all told from her point of view, and yet I don't think I could have wrote about it in any other way. Some stories are told to be understood differently by many, some stories have to be told like the one below. And that's okay. That's good. That's how it should be.

But I digress, and so I close with only a small request to think on what it means to you.

The warm glow caresses my skin. Peels me layer by layer. Until I am pure.

Carmen Red, The Path

Fire.

It burns, yes. It can destroy faster and more thoroughly than perhaps anything else, raging through the wood and fields and leaving smoldering ash behind. Many people understand this, and at the heart of everything, they fear the fire the most.

But it is also light. It provides a glow to the world that never existed before, and chases away the deepest of the shadows. It is also life. It keeps us from freezing to death, it makes the food we eat safe to consume, it shapes our world flame by flickering flame.

And after the flames, after all the woods and fields have been burned, what happens after that? Life springs anew faster than after anything else, any storm or other disaster. The purging flames leave the world ready for something new, another life, another story.

I've always had those flames, springing up from my cupped hands like a flower freed from the bud, and shivering as I stared at it in awe. For a long time, I tried to chase it away. Being called a demon for it, and hurt for it, well when you're a child, trying to not do the thing that gets you hurt is sometimes the only option you have.

For a long time, it was my bane. Then it was my savior, the one thing that kept me from being destroyed on the inside, watching those who tried crumble and dissolve in flares that brightened even the shadows of the height of day.

After that, there was an hour, perhaps two, where I couldn't stop creating it, snapping that slender flame into existence over and over again, because for the first time, it was something I could do, that no one else could. The warmth of it seemed to permeate my bones and soak me in something entirely new. I was peeled, layer by layer, by that flickering golden light.

But reality still seemed to conspire to steal my joy of that light. I didn't use it for much, not then. It warmed me on days when the here and now seemed to wrap around me like a frozen blanket and I had no outlet.

Even though the people who had called me demon and devil had since passed from my life, I still heard their words echoing every time I called the inner fire to my hand. I still felt their burning hatred and snapping teeth snapping at my feet.

Sometimes even now I still feel it, but my fire keeps them away. Slowly, I learned to pride in my unusual gift. God grants life in the strangest ways, and He must have wanted me to live for something if he gave me the ability to call both life and death from the burning ache just under my breastbone. I don't always believe my own reassurance, but after thirty years, learning how to set things aside is a necessity.

I went through school with the knowledge of that flame filling my heart, and yet it didn't burn hot enough to wash any of the ice around me away. Loneliness became my companion, and though there must have been those who would have reached out in return if I had asked, I never did.

Subaru-san told me a tiny bit of his twin sister before. I think I would have liked her, she really was the kind of person to see everything around her, and he spoke of her as never hesitating to talk to someone who needed it.

She was only five years younger than I, I wished I could have met her before she died. But such wishes aren't for the likes of me, after God takes the ones who die into his arms, they rest in Heaven and wait for the ones they had to leave behind.

I wonder if I can meet her there.

But I digress. My tale continues with the graduation of school entirely, and the discovery that I had no clue what to do with my life. It was 1991, and although things had improved much since I was born, I still was completely lost.

I don't know exactly how I ended up working in a Soapland, although in hindsight it's a great deal better than I could have ended up, lost and abandoned on the street. The girls there are kind, and protective, and I'm no different than them on the outside. But I think somewhere along the dark roads and chills that even my flames couldn't keep away, I stumbled on a place where I was seen as someone other than the quiet girl whose past was so shrouded that the veils could never be drawn back, only burned away.

Power is such an unruly thing, like fire in a way. It intoxicates, and there's a reason why a phrase that travels around the world is so easily stated: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But in some ways, it is also freedom, and to someone who's never had any power before, that freedom alone can change everything.

At my hands and touch and voice, I could manipulate people, mostly men, into dissolving at my touch. The tricks of each person all seemed to blur together, until just by reading their body language, I could see what they wanted before they themselves did. As far as associations with the tales contained in the Bible, I felt less out of place than before, for instead of a lost girl looking for guidance from anywhere I found it, I was a Mary Magdalene, confident and proud of what something that only I had could do. Maybe to others more fortunate, it's a foolish thing to think, but I was finding my foothold any way I could. Twenty-two years of being lost, and I'd found my home in a soapland. And I don't regret that at all come to think of it.

Afterwards, I was able to think of such things as clothes that I wanted to wear, places I wanted to live, a person I wanted to be. I could have changed from the girl in the soapland to a woman doing something else, even just a secretary, but I liked where I was. And to an extent, I still do. I keep them safe. Others with powers near to mine, although none other wielding untamed flame, arising has become more common as the end of the century draws nigh, and the stigma on having them is less. The girls at the house trust me to protect them from those who won't accept a no, and I have sent men away with burns so severe that they had to be hospitalized for them.

I repent for every single one of those burns, but I do what I must, and it is my power that protects others.

That's the nature of being a Seal, isn't it? To protect what is important. It took me a long time to understand that. And now I do. For me, God gave me fire, purifying and murderous, to protect. To protect all of those who could not escape on their own, whether the chains were physical or not is irrelevant.

I've had to learn how to make my peace with many things that I can't change though. Fire is the base for change, it is not change itself. Change is carried in on the wind, and like the wind, it is subtle and slow, or torrential and fast, but as inevitable. I set the stage.

There are many things I haven't spoken of, many tangents I could have taken and didn't. And yet...I feel at peace with what I have said. I have said enough for now. All that I have to be is what I am right now. With God's gift in my heart, and His flames in my hand, I will fight to protect.

There is a bird in mythology, I can no longer remember which culture had it first, but it is older than many. A bird of flames and rebirth. So many people forget that some things have to be stripped bare and dead before new life can spring forth. They assume that the wind can blow without end, a lasting comfort, and shun the fire. They lock away the hope for something new because they aren't willing to find their own flames, literal or figurative. I must now be their flame. For the people who have no road, for those cast aside and shunned for something they could never change, they couldn't help. For those who fought with their own smoke and embers so long that those died out and left only the kindling ready. For those who've wanted to set those flames alight and did not know where the kindling was placed.

For all of them, I will be their fire to restore. I will be their phoenix.

Thoughts?