She gasped for the air between the raindrops and coughed. She blinked the rain away from her eyes.
Everything was drenched. The forest floor steamed, smoldered, and reflected the moonlight. The storm clouds were pulling away, and the full moon shone through the trees. She had returned from the lake bottom—or through the lake bottom—to where the condor had found her.
She put her head in her hands, taking a slow, deliberate breath, filling her lungs fully and breathing it all out again. She looked out between her hands into the dark forest, and for the first time she felt it under her skin. It was all suddenly personal. She took her hands away and felt the wisps of smoke and the raindrops falling from the trees.
Orange Ash (James Stark)
Cindy rose up from the damp, black forest floor and began to wander down slope.
Still in a reverie, she came upon the trail, and began to follow it down-canyon, under the moon. When she came upon a trailside spring, she stopped to taste her. When she came upon a Giant, she caressed his red, muscular flesh.
Soon after the moon set over the ridge, she saw a small, smoldering fire below the trail. She felt her way down to the ring of glowing coals and found some unused kindling next to the ring. She fed the kindling to the fire as an appetizer; then once the fire had flamed up, quietly fed it a couple of heavier branches. She saw something in the fire, and using a stick, dragged it to the edge of the fire ring.
She recognized the camper sleeping by the fire as Sam. He slept fully dressed and sitting, using his bag—still rolled up—as a seat cushion.
Cindy stood before the fire as though before a mirror. She gazed into it as though she were gazing into her own eyes. She felt as though the fire had burned a thick casing—a chrysalis, perhaps—away from her true skin, and now she felt lighter, her nerves more perceptive, the surrounding forest no longer outside of her. It all seemed to be part of her, and she of it, though she had accepted a special role: she was human, the igneous species—the torchbearer. She’d evolved here with the fire—for the fire. The fire had formed her. She felt the waves of heat lick her legs. They were naked, hairless. They were long and straight; the legs of a ground dweller who had slept safely on the ground for a thousand millennia, guarded by a sleepless hearth. She ran her fingers over her jaw and felt her teeth through her tender human lips. This was not the mouth of a horse or a wolf. It wasn’t even the mouth of an ape. It was the mouth of a cook. She looked over and recognized Sam, civilized man, sleeping in the dark, licked by the firelight. She picked up a heavy branch and tossed it onto the fire.