Hi! Sorry for the wait! This is a two-chapter update because posting this single chapter with no context felt weird, so...

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Chapter Seven: The Firebird and her Lover

A long, long time ago, the world was divided in two: the Heavens and the Oceans. The spirits of fire lived in the Heavens, and the spirits of water lived in the Oceans, and for all of history, the two realms had been at war.

One day, the Dragon, a prince of the seas, found a little kernel drifting in the waters. He did not know what it was, but he sensed that there was life inside the tiny thing, and so brought it back to the palace. However, he did not know how to release the life that seemed to be trapped in the kernel, and inadvertently broke it open, distinguishing the life inside.

He was bothered by it, but soon forgot about it. He was a prince, and had many more important duties to attend to.

Some time later, as the Dragon was once again patrolling the edge of the seas, where there was nothing but vast empty space between his kingdom and the Heavens, he spotted a spirit of fire, flying over the waters, searching.

Fire was his enemy, but he was also curious. So he called out, "What are you doing, straying so close to my kingdom?"

And the spirit of fire answered, "I search for something that I have lost."

"And what is it that you have lost?"

"A seed," said the spirit.

"A seed?" repeated the Dragon. He had never heard of the word.

"Yes." The spirit of fire extended a hand, where on her palm sat five little kernels just like the one the Dragon had found before.

"I had six before. Now there are only five." And when the Dragon remained silent, the spirit added, with a tinge of pride in her voice, "They are my creations."

But the Dragon was skeptical. "Those things are alive, but what do they do?"

"They grow. Just like how everything alive grows."

"What do they grow into?"

But the spirit smiled secretively. She offered one of the seeds to the Dragon. "It's a surprise."

The Dragon took the seed from her, marveling at the tiny flicker of life in his hand. But it also scared him. Though this spirit of fire did not know it, he had destroyed one of her seeds. He had killed one already. What if he killed this one, too?

He tried to give it back. "I can't take this. I do not know how to make it grow."

But the spirit of fire clasped his hand and closed his fingers over the seed. Her touch—to his surprise—did not burn, but was warm and gentle.

"It is simple," she told him. "You put it in a place where it can sleep, and you give it room to grow, and it will grow."

And then she spread her wings, flames flaring from her back, and soared away, still hovering over the surface of the Oceans, presumably still searching for that seed that she had lost.

"You should go back to your realm of fire," the Dragon called to her. "It is dangerous here."

"It is dangerous everywhere," she replied. "And I must find my seed."

"I will search for it for you," the Dragon reassured her, though his gut knotted with the lie. "This is my realm; it will not be difficult."

For a moment, the spirit of fire hesitated. But then she smiled, sweet as honey, and obliged.

Once he could no longer see her, the Dragon returned a second time to the palace with a kernel of life in his hand.

Put it in a place where it can sleep, and give it room to grow.

The Dragon hesitated for a long time, unsure what the spirit of fire had meant and what exactly to do. But finally, he found a secluded part of the Oceans encased constantly by warm currents, and buried the seed in the sands there.

Every day, he checked on the seed. When nothing seemed to be happening, he began checking only every few days. And when still, nothing seemed to happen, he grew impatient and angry, and decided that he had been foolishly tricked by the spirit of fire.

Many years passed, and the Dragon forgot about the seed, for the most part. Sometimes he wondered, but stubbornness prevented him from going back to the place where he had buried it.

And the war raged on.

One battle, the spirits of water managed to drive the spirits of fire back, leaving many bodies in their wake, wings broken and fiery halo extinguished. Though the Heavens held their borders, it was a victory for the Oceans.

After the battle, the Dragon and his troops went amongst the dead, finishing off those who still had breath, bringing back their own for mourning and funeral. And amongst the bodies, the Dragon found her.

It was undeniably the same spirit of fire who had given him the seed, and though there was a jagged gash across her back, damaging her wings, she still breathed, flickers of flame igniting now and then across her brow. When he found her, she opened her eyes, and smiled.

"What did the seed grow into for you?"

Murder had never been so difficult before.

He hid her. He put her amongst large rocks that hid her from view, and when the rest of the work was done, the Dragon snuck back to where she rested. When her wound was cleaned and bandaged, he carefully lifted her and brought her to that hidden corner of the Oceans, where the currents were warm and soft, where he had not visited for several years.

And there, he saw, was… something.

It was unlike anything he had seen before. It stemmed out from the ground, reaching upwards with many claw-like limbs. Its skin was silvery brown and rough to the touch, and it wore a dress of green that ruffled and waved in the gentle currents.

The spirit of fire woke then, and saw what had grown from the seed.

"Ah," she said, sounding immensely pleased, "a tree."

"A tree?" The Dragon had never heard of that term before either.

"Yes." The Dragon placed her under that 'tree', and she placed a hand against its silver-brown skin. "We have several of these in the Heavens, but they look very different from this. Must be the effects of the Oceans."

"What…" He didn't understand how she could speak so fearlessly. Every word he spoke he had to prepare himself beforehand. "What does this 'tree' do?"

"Do?" She had to contemplate for a moment, and then answered with a dazzling grin. "Nothing in particular. It just grows." She patted the tree again. "It seems like it is not season yet, and I do not know the type of tree this is, but it might flower, and it will become the magnificent and beautiful. Then, it might grow fruits, which you would be able to eat."

"Eat?" That certainly caught his attention.

She laughed. "Maybe. I don't know for sure yet. We will have to see."

"We will see," the Dragon agreed.

And the war raged on.

But ultimately, war was only one part of the world.

Fire had always been the enemy. Fire burned. Fire destroyed. Fire was pain.

But fire was warm, and playful, and—the Dragon realized—fire was life. It had that same breath to the flicker that had been stored in the seed. When she kissed him back, she had that same playfulness, that same recklessness that teased him and told him that this, whatever this was, had the potential to become so much more.

They rarely spoke about the war, but the Dragon still had his obligations, and sometimes, when he arrived at the tree bone-weary and battle-worn, the spirit of fire might ask.

"The Firebird," he finally said one day, groaning as he eased down next to her. "If only we can find her, we might be able to end this war."

The spirit of fire gave him a puzzled look. "The Firebird? Which Firebird?"

The Dragon shot back an equally puzzled look, even as the horror dawned.

The Heavens had hundreds of princesses, and each and every one of them was a Firebird.

"You've already killed many Firebirds," the spirit of fire told him. "And," she added, much more quietly, "you've already captured one too."

And many years passed, and the war raged on.

What was once a single tree had become a maze of strange lifeforms. There were so many things that the Firebird had created that the Dragon had not known could exist. The tree he had planted flowered and produced bunches of sweet and spiced berries, but then she had added onto that: bushes with sandy and tangy fruits, vines that produced sweet berries in the most wonderful colors, flowers that bloomed and wilted and dripped nectar. The Firebird had created another world in this small space, a place that was neither Ocean nor Heaven. It was not submerged in water, nor free and blowing like the clouds. It was steady and dry and constant and there.

They still did not speak about the war.

She sat among her creations, fire on her crown, light in her eyes, nectar on her lips. She was his haven, and fire was life, and passion, and love.

"You can use me, you know," she reminded him sometimes. "To end the war."

He hugged her closer.

"No," he murmured into her hair. "Let them burn and drown each other. They will never touch you."

But vast though the Oceans were, the Heavens watched all. Though rarely did the Eye of Heaven turn to the corners of the world, when It did, checking thoroughly the cracks between the realms, It spotted the garden, and the Firebird, and the Dragon she laid with.

And the Eye of the Storm, which so rarely opened, swept across Its realm, and It came across this disturbance, where the Oceans did not bury and the Heavens did not claim. And It saw the garden, and the Dragon prince, and his Firebird lover.

Treachery! howled the Heavens.

Treachery! raged the Oceans.

And one day, when the Dragon returned to where she was, he found ashes and driftwood instead, and not a flicker of her flame.

And though this tale is called the Dragon and the Firebird, this is not the story of their tragic love.

This is the story of how this world was made.

In the end, it was not so hard to create a world. All it took was devastation.

When the Oceans were upturned and the Heavens were split apart, that was all there was to it. Because to create a world, you simply had to destroy the world that came before.

The world resisted, of course, the same way the world always resisted sudden, radical changes. For the first time since the very beginning, the Heavens and the Oceans banded together to hold back a single Dragon. Many years, the Dragon raged, peeling back the sea and making the sky bleed, while unbeknownst to him, the Firebird struggled in her golden cage in the Heavens, wings clipped, hands bound, fire muffled.

One Dragon, however, could not possibly win against the entire world. The armies above and the armies below drove him back. Nobody knows where he went or what happened to him, but when he was defeated, no body was discovered, no tomb erected. The Dragon prince, still believing his lover murdered for treason and spite, remade the world and the realms and vanished forever.

And to this day, the Firebird sat in her cage, weaving songs for her long-lost lover, praying for his return.

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