Elemental Challenge

So my wife over at atfouroclock.com introduced me to challenges.  She showed me this one challenge where I have to write about a different element for fifteen installments (she found it here).  They are as follows:

1-Fire
2-Earth
3-Air
4-Water
5-Electricity
6-Light
7-Poison
8-Darkness
9-Bubbles
10-Ghosts
11-Blood
12-Heart
13-Sand
14-Time
15-Space

I decided to do this in a form of stories called "Elemental Lessons".  I hope you enjoy them.

DAY 1: FIRE - Element of Passion

     “Come boy, let’s sit here by the fire and talk a bit.”  Creg sat slowly into his chair, his long legs tucking back beneath the wooden frame with protesting pops and cracks.

     “But there is no fire!” Remus shot the old man a look as though he had gone daft.

     “Not yet, boy!”  He pulled his pipe off the table beside him and proceeded to fill it with his harsh smelling tobacco.  Once that was done, he glanced up at Remus from under his shaggy brows and said, “Well, there won’t be a fire until you get one going!”  He motioned with a wave of his hand in an irritable fashion and then popped the stem of his pipe into his mouth, not yet lighting it.  He then leaned back his head and closed his eyes as though he had all the time in the world.

     Remus just shook his head and turned, pulled his coat down and went out to fetch the wood for the fire.  He had been with Creg just three months, having come by the request of his parents, to be taught herbs and lore under the old apothecary.  So far all he had learned was what calluses were and how it was possible to split a fingernail on a sponge while washing dishes.

     He walked the path to the woodshed and pulled out an armload of wood and lugged it back to the shack that Creg called home.  “What a piece of dung!” whispered Remus.  He had started to think of running away.  Looking out at the woods, the darkness of night just creeping in, he felt that thought crawling back into his mind. Then he shook his head to clear the idea away.  His parents paid good money for him to be here and Creg would teach him something…if nothing else, how to keep a clean home.

     Sighing, he turned back and went inside.  Creg seemed not to have moved, his eyes closed and his lips still firmly planted around the stem of his pipe.  Remus dumped the wood in front of the fireplace and then pulled out a handful of shavings from the basket to one side.  As he set the tinder in place, he heard Creg groan.

     “Ah, finally back, huh? Was thinkin’ you had gotten lost.”  The old man smiled, his teeth yellowed from tobacco stains but still straight and even.  After he had adjusted in the chair, he leaned forward, propping one arm on his knee and shaking his pipe in the direction of the fireplace.  “Do you know fire, boy?”

     Remus turned to look at Creg.  He pondered the question for a moment.  Sometimes the old man asked him totally off the wall questions that usually ended up in a long discussion of nothing important. However, they did cause him to work his mind a bit and Remus, unlike some his friends from the village, actually liked to think.

     “No, I don’t.”  He stammered a bit and then said, “Well, that is to say, I do sir, but only that it is hot, is fed by wood and can cook things.”

     Creg chuckled. “True, boy, true.”  He motioned towards the fireplace.  “What you have there is the beginnings of a fire. It is the start of something that can create and destroy.”

     “But how can something do both?”

     “Well, let’s start with the tinder.  You see how the small bits are used, right?”  Creg handed him a match.  With a flick of his wrist, Remus saw the quick flash and then the subtle orange that flickered on the end of the match.  He leaned forward and touched it to the wood shavings.  The tinder caught and proceeded to smolder then flare into tiny licks.

     “Now watch the tinder as it burns. See how each piece is taken by the flame and then consumed?” Remus nodded.  “This is creation and destruction.  By burning each thin strip of wood, you get more and more fire.  When you add the larger pieces of wood…” Creg motioned towards the pile of sticks and Remus proceeded to add a few to the pile.  “…the flame that was started by the tinder starts to eat at them and thus you have the beginning of a wondrous, and yet, relaxing fire.”  As he said this, the orange and white tendrils began to snake over the dry wood, slowly eating at each stick and soon a crackling could be heard as the wood began to burn.

     “Fire is very much like people.”  Creg leaned back, his smoking pipe clenched in one of his gnarled hands.  “When we are born, we are like tinder, waiting for the touch of something to set us aflame, something that makes us who we are.” He paused as he stared at the fire. “When that ‘something’ touches us, we begin to feel as though our world is growing, much like the flame growing on the tinder.  Our world begins to expand and we seek more fuel for our thoughts, more wood to burn and extend our life.”

     “With me so far, boy?” 

     Remus looked from the fire to Creg, his face red from being so close to the fire.  He nodded and Creg continued. “Just as we add wood to the fire to let it grow, so God puts experiences into our path so that we may grow.  These experiences can be many things.  They can be other people, trials that shape us, happy moments that we desire to remember….anything.  Our life is one big fire and it is only ours alone.  My fire is mine and yours is yours.” 

     “But, if God is the one feeding our ‘fires’, as you call them, then would he not share our fire with us?”  Remus asked.

     “Ah-ha! Very good, boy!”  Creg beamed at him. “God does share our fires.  He is the one that makes sure our fires don’t go out until He is ready for them too.  He keeps piling more wood on us to make us grow.  Soon we are a force to be reckoned with, just as a very large bonfire is.  However, it is up to us, as the fire, to learn what can be burned through and what can’t be.  This is experience. As we learn what can and cannot be done in our lives, we are like fire in that we learn what can and can’t be burned.” 

     Remus nodded slowly, contemplating the idea.  For a few minutes they sat together watching the fire.  Remus added more wood and there was a sudden cracking sound as one of the other pieces broke due to the flame.

     “Then there are moments in our lives where we seem to have learned all we can on a matter and we seek other avenues to experience, other pieces of wood to burn through.”  At this, as if on cue, the new wood caught and began to burn.

(Source: freefoto.com)

     “Love is one such experience in our lives that can burn us inside and out.  It can create us and destroy us.  It is a passion unto itself and some even call it a fire of the soul.  See that large piece of wood, the biggest one you brought in….yes, that one, put that one in the fire.”

Remus placed the four inch round log onto the fire and the other branches and wood crumbled beneath it.  Sparks flew and there was a hiss as it settled into place.

     “Love is like that.  It causes all our other experiences in life to either be pushed aside or scattered.  There are still memories of them, but the love we feel is the largest and most important part of us.  It can be the love we feel for another, or the love we feel for a hobby.  It can be love of reading, writing, art, or even the love of ones’ self.  Every single person eventually has this part of their fire take precedence over all else.  It becomes the largest part of their lives.”

     Remus turned and looked at Creg. “But what if you love more than one thing?  Would that not be more than one large piece in the ‘fire’?”

     “Why yes, yes it would.  That is why our lives, unlike this fire, is more akin to a roaring bonfire.  We, as people experience all this love and passion so our lives flare frequently…and at times, often.”

     There was a long spell of silence then as the two watched the fire burn.  Remus felt his eyes grow heavy and he leaned back, propping himself on his arms.  He let out a yawn and looked over at Creg.  The old man was staring intently at the fire, his sapphire blue eyes glinting through the smoke of his pipe.  He saw the lines etched in Cregs’ face and wondered at the fire which burned within the elder. As if reading his mind, and with a suddenness that shook Remus out of his musings, Creg spoke.

     “I have had two great loves in my life, two huge logs that took over my fire, if you will. One is my love of the medicinal world.  I love the fact that God has given us the world and the cures for almost all that ail us, lie in this world if we know where to look.”  Creg smiled a small smile at nothing in particular.  Then, in a small, whispered croak, he said, “The other was my wife.”

     That last revelation shocked Remus.  He had never thought of Creg as the marrying kind.  For all of his thirteen years, he had only ever known the old man as a loner and only called on to help the sick and infirm.

     “Ah, but enough of that.”  Creg shook his head and sat forward, shaking his pipe at Remus.  “Can you tell me, boy, what the final stages of a fire represent in our lives?”

     He thought about it for a bit and even closed his eyes to better picture the fire and how it would end up a pile of cold ash by morning, no trace of the wood, tinder or flame to be found.  After a while, Remus just shook his head.  “Honestly, I can’t.  I at first thought we would end up as nothing…but then that would not be true.  A fire, when it is done, is ash…and we use the ash in our garden.”
      “Quite true, boy.  When a fire is dying, we see embers.  In our case, as people, we have our memories of our life.  Those memories are our embers.  They are still hot within us and if a new experience comes along, just as a new piece of wood added to hot coals, we could have a new flame in our lives.  Eventually, though, embers die completely, just as we do.  We are left with ash.  We take the ash and scatter them in our garden to help with the growing of our herbs.  Thus life begins anew.  God takes us in his time and when he does, we become one with the earth and our bodies become as ash.  We are not forgotten because we have left something of ourselves behind.  That can be a legacy that others learn from, such as me teaching you and you carrying on my work once I am gone.”

     Suddenly Remus became concerned.  He felt a panic threaten to fill him at the loss of Creg.  Sure the old man was annoying at times and, as far as he could tell, Creg had yet to teach him anything of real import…

     …or had he?

     “Was this a lesson?”

     Creg looked at him, a small smile on his face. “Well, that depends, boy.”  He tapped his pipe into his hand and tossed the dregs into the fire.  Standing slowly, he turned and began to walk away.  Stopping just before going into his room, he looked back. “Are you going to use tonight to help your fire grow?”

     Remus just looked at him.

     “Be sure to bank the fire before you go to bed would you?”  With that, Creg shut his door, leaving Remus to his thoughts.