Swallow

Her earliest memory was fire, a mass of fire closing in. When fire touched wood, wood fell. When it touched grass, grass shriveled. When it touched water, water boiled. If fire touched me, what would become of me? That was her first question. And then came more questions, crowding into her mind even faster than the flames. Why did fire take on a different color with everything it touched, a different smell? Did fire have an end? And if it did, what lay at that end? Was she fire? What made her herself? Then a voice broke through her thoughts. "Sister, run!" That was the first call she ever heard. A pair of hands reached her before the fire did and pulled her into a run. The flames fell behind, the wind rushed at her side, cries filled her ears, and the sky opened ahead of her. And in that first run, the world slowly began to take shape. Somewhere in that endless flight, she came to understand that the one tugging her forward was her "younger brother." It would be a very long time before she understood the words people used for the fire she had fled from: war spreading in every direction, wildfire burning villages, lives cut down like grass, families driven apart. When those who had lost their homes spoke of that fire, they wept with hatred. "It was that fire." "That fire destroyed our home." "That fire killed so many people." At the time she still could not really speak. She only repeated a few sounds she had picked up for herself. "People. Kill. Fire. Warmth." Her words fell like stones into water and stirred up even louder voices. "Idiot." "Half-formed thing." "Dead weight." "Why not throw her away and be done with it?" She could not fully understand the words, but she understood this much: they hated her, the way they hated wildfire. Her "younger brother" took her hand again and shouted something back at them. After that he led her a very, very long way. But this time the road had an end, and at the end of it stood a person. A person with beautiful feathers, like a bird. Like her "younger brother," that bird-like person took her other hand and said to them, "Come on. Let's go home." She asked, "Who are you?" The person said, "From today on, I am your mother." She asked, "Then who am I?" The person said, "You? Oh... do you have names?" The three of them crossed a very high mountain. But this time the road felt short. Perhaps the road home always does, once it has a direction. Beyond the mountains, "father" came to meet them. After father and mother spent the whole night discussing it, they told her, "Your name is Ying Ning. His is Ying An." From that day on, she had a father, a mother, a younger brother, and a name. From that day on, she was no longer just a piece of wildfire. She was truly a person. But that mistaken conclusion would one day come back to demand its price. Fire took back everything that conclusion had given her: her "name," her "father," her "mother," her "younger brother," even her "running." She would be given back to fire once more. And yet, dimly, she felt that this time it would be different. She would not be like wildfire, raging out and devouring everything in sight. Wildfire had taken everything she could see. But what they had left her was like a seed buried deep in the earth, waiting to climb out of a heart and slowly fall from the eyes.