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The mighty glaciers dominate the north. It’s cold enough where it’s not very pleasant to be there most times of the year.
The Ice Age was cold enough for most to die, warm enough for some to survive. There are always survivors. Always something that lasts past the damage. Someone to carry on, to attempt to preserve the memory.
The glaciers are a remnant from that bygone era, sweeping over land and changing it to fit their will. Solid chunks of ice carrying with them dirt and rocks — they give, and they take away.
The glaciers are melting; the ice is being destroyed. The sea chops at it every day. The laws of thermodynamics seek balance above all else.
Either they all freeze, or they all melt.
The concern is not in the laws of thermodynamics, but the speed at which they are taking effect — too fast for everything to recalibrate, to accommodate the changes taking place.
The speed of change can be staggering. But sometimes that is for the best. Not the melting ice — but in people, in societies.
Ice is universally cold, and sometimes less beneficial and more destructive. But it bears importance as well. It preserves.
Food kept inside iceboxes, cryogenic freezing…preservation.
Ice is not meant for change. Water is one of the most malleable substances, but once it becomes ice, it becomes frigid.
But all ice is meant to melt. The temperature in most of the world isn’t cold enough for ice to survive outside of places that are colder on purpose. Water is malleable, changeable. Solid to liquid to gas. All elements are like this to some extent, but water is the most common. The most frequently transformed. Steam is used to drive machines; water is used to drive life; ice is used to drive preservation.
Fire burns, but it also brings life.
In some ancient farming techniques, fire is just another tool, akin to a scythe or a hoe. It is used to raze dead and harvested crops so their ashes may fertilize the harvest for the next batch.
Fire allows the new to thrive.
Some trees have an immunity to fire. Forest fires are their friends, burning the undergrowth so their seeds can truly blossom and thrive instead of being overtaken by other plants.
They say phoenixes die in a burst of flame to be born again as a chick and live a fresh new life. It sounds like a tiring existence, to grow so old and then end up back where it all started.
Fire, in some beliefs, was a gift.
In ancient Greece, Prometheus was punished for giving fire — sacred, living — to humanity, the people he fashioned out of clay. He was punished to eternal torture for his sins, chained to a rock and left for his organs to be eaten by birds. His creations were punished by Pandora’s box — mostly a curse with a single blessing inside.
Fire, to some people, meant home.
The hearth was, before the advent of modern heating technology, the center of homes. The fire that burned in it was the only source of warmth at night, so the home was centered around it, allowing the warmth to spread through as many of the house’s rooms as possible.
Kagami believes the first fires were without a purpose. They burnt because of lightning; because the electricity managed to hit something that would burn. The fire probably fascinated the humans or whatever ancestor of homo sapiens first learned to harness it.
She used to think of herself as ice. Cold, frozen solid, difficult to change. Moving quickly — but so encapsulating it seems slow.
But now she knows what it is like to be the lightning in a storm. She prefers the thrill of electricity, ephemeral but important. Lightning is fast and precise and unyielding. It may only last a brief moment, but the flash leaves an impact.
The first fires were accidents. Kagami believes this much. But in modern times, they’re all controlled. Stoves and fireplaces and campgrounds.
A lightning bolt can still strike something dead and set it ablaze. She still has fire in her soul. It blazes, seeking a place to strike.
But it will take a perfect storm before she will be allowed to.
They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Marinette’s attempts to get her and Adrien back together are fruitless for that reason — that bridge is very thoroughly burnt.
Perhaps Ryuuko’s lightning has set a bigger fire than Kagami could have ever imagined.
She used to think of herself as ice. But everywhere in this city is warm — and if the temperature is above the freezing point, it no longer exists as ice but as water.
She has certainly changed since she first arrived here. She has turned from ice to fire, from cold to burning hot.
Now she can embrace the warmth of the city with open arms. The warmth of the people she could consider friends. That she should consider friends. People like Marinette and Adrien; people who are kind to her.
The people that have aided in her transformation from ice to fire.
Kagami takes a deep breath in and prepares to externalize the storm inside her. To be the lightning, the wind, the rain.
She blazes. The blaze is just as much fire as the rest of her. She takes the blaze into how she fights; even when she is water or wind she takes inspiration from flames. She fights like a fire resists the efforts of firefighters; unpredictable and unrelenting. She applies this approach to her fencing as well; Adrien complements her passion when they spar again.
But where she has gained passion, he has managed to lose it. Or perhaps…perhaps he never had it in the first place.
Fire is a better thing to be. It lets her destroy the things she doesn't want. She thinks Mother would rather Kagami stay frozen, stay ice, stay unable to truly move. But she is now part of a fire, and she is much, much better for it.