Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The year is 1287 SS (Stonesetting). A middle-aged Fire element and his wife, heavy with child, arrived on the southern outskirts of the prosperous port of Element City.   

Just as they had come to adopt a new life, so too had they adopted new names from the Common language, ones they were still getting used to: Bernie for the man and Cinder for the woman.  

The sky was bright on that beautiful day, only partially obscured by not only the occasional cloud, but the grand, sweeping skyline of the many buildings that made up Element City, filled with towering granite and limestone spires with their tops colored in shades of blue. Some had vents that water flowed out of, others were overgrown with leaves, and still others had been modified with spiral windows that allowed Air elements to flow easily in and out. Both Bernie and Cinder had noticed that there was nothing that resembled the familiar clay shapes and smokestacks of Firish architecture. And yet, there was something picturesque about it all, something so enthralling that the two had to stop and gawk.  

Beautiful, was the only thing Bernie could muster in his mind before Cinder gently nudged him out of his thoughts.  

After pulling his jaw off the floor, the Fire man helped his wife onto a small longship painted with light and dark blue embellishments and specifically made to navigate the aqueducts. It was crowded with passengers. He picked up their bags, and found himself struck by how small their lives were now, packed into these simple leather and metal packs.  

The four rowers tapped the butt of their oars on the bottom of the boat, and it began to accelerate to high speeds, likely powered by magic alongside rowing. As Bernie continued looking around, he found himself and Cinder to be the only Fire elements onboard. He knew coming here would mean being a minority, but he couldn’t deny that finally seeing it in person made his heart a little heavier. Still, seeing his wife stroke her full belly returned a warmth to him. This place would be the home of their new life—and the home of their child, very soon.  

The boat rocked slightly as a rower found himself off-rhythm with his coworkers, causing a Water element passenger to lose partial control of his form, water spilling from his wavy hair directly onto Cinder, extinguishing part of her head and right arm to both her and her husband’s alarm. Thinking quickly, Bernie reached into his bag and fed her wood, allowing her to regenerate her lost flames, though not without noticeable loss of energy. After all, the child was due soon, and carrying it had left Cinder already tired. After he fussed over his wife, making sure she was alright while offering soft reassurances in Firish, he grit his teeth in anger, hissing one of the words he knew best in Common with the most disdain he could muster:  

“Water.”  

The incident weighed on him even as they arrived at the northern skirts of town, where most landlords offered shelter to renters. But to their dismay, there was not a shred of hospitality shown. Some elements slammed their doors shut on seeing the couple, others made excuses, and still others didn’t even open the door despite clearly being inside.   

The sun had set and the two Fire elements were still without shelter. Exhausted and demoralized, they scurried nearer to the edge of town. Bernie’s steps were heavy and slow, and he huffed out a sigh, looking down at the paved dirt road beneath him as he sat on a nearby stone beneath an aqueduct. As he looked up, he saw a building before him, tall and old and worn. He gasped in delight.   

This place… destroyed as it may be, is perfect. He walked in, full of excitement, taking in every nook and cranny of this old place. He stepped in further, energetically speaking in Firish to Cinder and gesturing towards the imaginary shelves and stock that this place would soon hold, only to have a section of rotted floorboards collapse beneath his feet, sending him into a shallow pit with an undignified yelp. After climbing out of the hole, they still managed to have a good laugh together.  

As night settled over a sleepy city, the two Fire elements had become three, and the air was filled with the cries of a newborn flame.  

“ It’s a girl, ” the new mother said in Firish, holding the baby close. “ She’s so perfect, ” replied the father, laying his head against his wife’s.  

Bernie gently placed down a lantern he had carried the whole way. Its steel was old and worn, etched with a glowing green sigil to keep its cargo burning: the Blue Flame. The Blue Flame held all the traditions of Fire, passed from every Fire parent to every Fire child, going all the way back up the bloodline of every Fire element there was to the Fire Primordial themselves. Sooner or later, this flame would be their daughter’s.  

He scooped up a handful of blue fire and released it over the newborn. The blue dispersed into her flames, quickly traded out for the typical yellows and reds, but not without eliciting a hearty giggle from the child. The man’s heart melted at the sight. She paused in her laughter, huffing once, twice, before a tiny sneeze flickered her entire form, much to her own bewilderment. The man couldn’t help but laugh. He picked up the tiny little flame, holding her in the air. She stretched out her arms toward her father, and for some reason, Common rather than Firish left his lips:  

“Welcome, my Ember, to your new life.”  

Chapter Text

“Someday, the shop will be yours,” her father Bernie had said. 

He had said it once at age 5, when they had hung their very own shop sign. The name of their shop, The Fireplace, was written on it in Common, using bold white letters. 

He had said it once at age 7, when she had learned to stock the handmade metal shelves with their signature Fire-culture merchandise. She learned where each woodchip sack, kol-nut, and piece of Firish metal-garb was to be placed. 

He had said it once at age 11, when she had mastered the art of scaring off the rowdy Water elements that would barge in every now and again and purposefully damage the merchandise. The Fireplace was her father’s pride and joy, and defending it never stopped sparking a bit of her own pride. However, on that day, Bernie had thought about hiring a mage to place a ward on Water elements around the whole store, despite the high price such a ward would incur. “I will not let Water water us down!” he had shouted. “But Àshfá , what if one of them is nice one day?” she replied with such innocence that her father had sighed softly and dropped the matter.  

He had said it once at age 15, after she had lost her temper with a particularly stubborn customer during her first time working at the counter. Her temper was the bane of her shop-running skills, building and building until her flames burnt a painfully intense purple and she literally and figuratively exploded. It’s not my fault that some customers push and push and push , she had thought. After discovering why she had erupted in such a way, Bernie sighed and stroked her cheek with a loving gaze. “Sometimes customer can be tough. Just take breath and make connection,” he had implored in his endearingly broken Common. 

It was days like this that twenty-five year old Ember Lumen had to cling tightly onto both of her father’s statements. Despite having already eaten most of the kol-nuts already, a Fire woman was complaining about how they were too expensive, and not made in Fireland, and weren’t crunchy enough, and didn’t have enough sauce, and on and on and on as Ember grit her teeth with the force of a vise, desperately trying to stifle her fury, and muttered her father’s mantra to herself over and over:  

“Take breath, make connection. Take breath, make connection,” but to Ember’s own dismay, she couldn’t stop her voice from rising alongside her heat, her fire flaring from red to yellow to magenta as she spoke faster and faster, louder and louder, trying to stop herself until her anger burst out with unrivaled ferocity, roaring harshly “TAKE BREATH, MAKE CONNECTION!” Fire exploded from her body, its sheer intensity melting the metal plating on the counter and shattering one of its glass panels. 

Ember blinked, realizing what she had done, and chuckled nervously at the shocked Fire woman, waving away some smoke still hanging in the air. “Sorry. Sorry about that, sorry.”  

“She almost went full purple!” one of their regulars, Flarietta, exclaimed. “I’ve never seen anyone go full purple!” she said excitedly to Flarry, another regular sitting across from her. Shame sunk deep into Ember’s stomach at the comment. I should be better than this. Why can’t I just stay calm? Bernie, seeing his daughter struggling, wandered over to help. “Sorry, everyone!” Ember managed to interject in the best customer service voice she could muster through her conflict.  

“Oh, please forgive my daughter. She burn bright, but sometimes too bright, eh?” Bernie said casually. Ember glanced down at the counter, shaking her head slightly in disappointment at her own mistake as the shame only sunk deeper into her gut. Despite such shame following every loss of temper she had, Ember had yet to develop any immunity to it, and doubted she ever would. 

 Bernie blew out a small fire that had started on the customer’s hat. “Nice hat, by the way. Let me make you a new batch, on the house.”  

“Okay.” came the reply, alongside a nervous laugh as the woman went to sit. 

Bernie lumbered toward the broken glass as Ember vaulted over the metal counter, crouching in front of the sigils meant to keep the woodsnacks warm that were now warped with melted metal. “Sorry Àshfá , I don’t know why that one got away from me.” She gave the metal a melancholic stare, unable to shake her feelings of disappointment as she heated it evenly.  

“Oh, you are tense because of big Red Dot Sale tomorrow,” Bernie replied, scooping the glass into his form and melting it. “It has us all in a broil.” He carefully reshaped it into a sheet to place back under the counter, then leapt into the kol-nut basin to remake the upset customer’s order. 

“I guess,” Ember replied, rounding off the edges of the metal with a slide of the hand. Truthfully, she hadn’t even been close to thinking about the Red Dot Sale. In fact, she had practically forgotten about it. What she had been thinking about was if there really was anything she could do about her temper. Ember smoothed the surface of the metal for the best sigil layout before carving the first sigil into the molten metal with her finger: 

The sigil for heat, or fire. Then, right beside it, in thinner lines, she continued writing. Ever since her first time at the counter, she had, without fail, lost her temper with a customer at least once a week, and on particularly bad weeks, multiple times a day. The complaints and specifics always changed, but the result was always the same: an explosion, followed by deep regret. Ember sighed as she wrote. “It’s just that some of these customers, they get me all…” she trailed off into a growl, the heat rolling off of her body intensifying. Her finger slipped, and she gave the metal a look of dissatisfaction as she had to erase the second sigil and redraw it: 

The sigil for feather, or softness and gentleness. Together they made the sigil-phrase for “gentle heat”. It shone softly with an otherworldly orange light, evidence of its effects properly manifesting.  

Bernie smiled encouragingly at his daughter. “I know, I know. Just do what we practice. You are so good at everything else.” Her shame melted away when faced with his reassurance. 

Ember traced a small arc above the new sigil-phrase, ensuring that its effects would be directed downward, underneath the counter where the woodsnacks were stored. “You’re right. I’ll get it.” She looked back over at her beloved Àshfá with a soft look of concern. “I just want you to rest.” She drew the heat back out of the metal, humming in satisfaction over her metalwork. “Done.” She grinned, only for it to quickly fall from her face in exchange for concern as coughs erupted from Bernie, sending soot into the air.  

“You okay? she asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.  

“Just tired.” He smiled at her reassuringly.  

“Let me help.” Ember helped him out of the basin, leaping in herself and continuing where he left off.  

“Bernie, that cough is terrible!” remarked Flarry. “Almost as terrible as your cooking!” Flarietta added. Bernie laughed. “Ê shútsh!” he responded in Firish, waving away the comments.  

“When you gonna put Ember out of her misery and retire, huh?” Flarietta asked. “Finally put her name on the sign out there?” 

Bernie grinned. “Ah, she take over when she’s ready.” 

Ember smirked. “And speaking of ready, we are more than ready for you to actually buy something if you’d ever get up off your lazy ash.” The entire shop erupted in howling laughter and “Ooh, burn!”s as Ember quickly returned to her work, a playfully smug satisfaction crossing her face. 

“But she is so close,” Bernie said after calming down, a smug tone entering his voice. “I mean she’ll probably never do deliveries as quick as me.”  

Ember scoffed. “You don’t think that I can beat your record?” She picked up a candle from next to the store’s main candle clock and inserted it into another, smaller candle clock. “Because I have been taking it easy on you so I don’t hurt your feelings, Mr. Smokestack,” The patrons laughed, fueled by her spunk as she ignited the candle with a breath and vaulted out of the kol-nut basin. “But game on!”  

She swiftly snatched a satchel from next to the basin, filling it with everything she knew her delivery recipients would need: flame oil, fireworks, kol-nuts, logs, and so on.  

Ember dodged the large stone brazier that held the Blue Flame near the back of the store and raced into the hearth room, where her mother Cinder was doing one of her signature love readings. The incense on the table had been lit by the Fire couple inside, and Cinder sniffed the sticks, trying to catch the scent of their love as she always did before Ember burst in, pushing aside the blue and purple glass beaded curtain that separated the hearth from the shop.  

“Ember, I’m doing a reading!” Cinder exclaimed.  

“Sorry Àshká , gotta grab some stuff. Going for Dad’s record,” Ember replied nonchalantly, grabbing some scented pinecones and glass bottles from the shelves, alongside an enchanted steel rod. 

“So, are we a match?” asked the shorter of the couple.  

“It’s true love!” Cinder exclaimed, trailing off into a lower tone as she glanced over at Ember. “Which is more than I ever smelled on this one.” 

Ember rolled her eyes. “Oh goody, this old chestnut.” 

Cinder, in response, only grabbed her daughter’s arm and sniffed it deeply as Ember fixed her with a look of annoyance. “Yep. Nothing. Just a loveless, sad future of sadness,” Cinder said, looking off into the distance (likely into the imaginary ‘sad future of sadness’ that she smelled). Ember sighed and walked for the curtain. 

“Ember, work with me!” Cinder said, rushing over to her daughter. “Your finding match was my mother’s dying wish!” 

Ember briefly recalled her grandma on her mom’s side being bedridden, slowly rasping to her: “Promise me one thing, marry Fire.” before groaning and extinguishing right before Ember and her parents’ eyes, to no small amount of horror. 

She shook off the memory, placing a hand on the shorter woman’s shoulder and giving her a partially amused glance. “Nice try, mom. Got to go.”  

Ember, hands now full with boxes and bottles, pushed the store door open with her hip, stepping into the streets of Firetown.  

“Yo yo yo, Ember!” came a voice. She glanced over to see its owner hopping out of one of the metal pots they kept outside: Clod, a young Earth street urchin with a simple cloak that was a little too big for him. Like many of his element, grass grew from his head like hair, and a stone sufficed for a flat nose.  

“Yo, Clod. Can’t talk, in a hurry,” came Ember’s reply. “And don’t let my dad catch you out here again.”  

“What?” he replied, almost managing to seem surprised as he followed Ember toward the side of the stone paved road, beneath the aqueduct that ran into this part of town. “Come on, he doesn’t like my landscaping?” As he talked, he pulled out a gardening fork and combed his grass with as much smoothness as he could. Ember simply groaned and rolled her eyes.  

She pulled out the enchanted metal rod from her pocket, tracing a circle on one of its ends and muttering a word in Firish to it. Magic force surged from it, forming into a reddish-orange vehicular construct with two wheels, handlebars, a seat, a pedal and an open platform on the back for carrying cargo. It hummed with energy, feeding off of Ember’s flame that had activated it. As a Firish innovation on the simplistic spell of Atlas’s Floating Disk and named for its use of a Fire person’s excess flame and heat, a flamecycle beat a horse any day in Ember’s eyes. 

She loaded her cargo onto the back side of the flamecycle alongside several other piles of merchandise from outside the shop as Clod continued to talk. “Anyway, the June Bloom festival is coming, and you just gotta be my date ‘cause check it out.” He raised his arm, displaying a single flower growing from his armpit. “I’m all grown up,” he said slyly, then sniffed the flower. “And I smell good.” He drew out the last word for extra emphasis, then plucked the flower with a grunt of pain, before handing it to Ember with a bow and flourish. “My queen.” 

With an unamused look, she took the flower from him, incinerating it with just a touch. “Sorry buddy, elements don’t mix.” She gave him a quick, smug glance, before remembering that she was on a timer. “Flame. Gotta go!” she said, gathering the rest of the cargo and slapping it on top. She slapped the sides of the cargo hold with both hands, and ropes made of magic force emerged from it, wrapping around the now-towering pile and securing it to the flamecycle. “Come on, go to the festival with me. You never leave this part of town!” Clod protested, giving her a pleading look. 

Ember gave the cargo a few pokes and prods, making sure the magic had properly tied it all down. “That’s because everything I need is right here,” she replied, gesturing to the town around them. Clay buildings, metal smokestacks, and signs in Firish filled the scene before them, but it was quickly interrupted with the trumpet of an incoming longship on the aqueduct above. Ember indignantly pulled her rain parasol from her belt and shielded herself from the runoff that poured from the longship. Clod, meanwhile, relished in the pouring water with a satisfied hum. Ember shook her head. This really only furthered her point.  

“The city isn’t made with Fire people in mind.” She closed her parasol, shaking the water off and getting onto her flamecycle. “It’d take an act of the Primordials or whatever other god is out there to get me across that bridge.” Ember pulled on a spare pair of artificer’s goggles and gripped the handlebars, feeling the steel handle that acted as an accelerator and all its etchings on her right hand.  

“A god, you say?” Clod fixed her with a flirtatious look. “How about a Clod?” He wiggled his eyebrows.  

Ember just looked at him in the most unamused way she could, trying to evoke the sheer disappointment of a parent after you did something wrong. With that, she gripped the steel handle, feeding it with her flame and watching lines of fire surge through the entire construct. Its hum became almost a growl with the new energy, and she twisted the handle, forcing the vehicle into sudden motion. “Gotta run!” she called, speeding away.  

Ember had long since mastered the art of flamecycle riding, deftly weaving through the familiar streets of Firetown. First stop was the Hagans’ incense shop on Copper Street, just a short ride away. Upon arrival, Ember pressed hard on the construct’s brake pedal, slowing it to a stop before leaping from her seat and grabbing their package from the pile, handing it to the couple standing outside. They beamed and thanked her, handing her a bag of incense as payment.  

The Rosts would have just started walking their baby at this time, and Ember knew she could slide by the hot log stand and a few other stops before catching the couple at the end of their walk at the intersection between Iron Street and Lead Avenue, so she tucked the incense into the pile, leaping back onto the flamecycle, and twisted the steel handle, shooting off deeper into the town.  

The massive pile of deliveries steadily began to dwindle. It was nearing evening now, and with a slide to a stop and a swish, she handed a wrapped package to the hot log vendor and zipped away towards the intersection. The familiar bustle of Firetown never got old no matter how many times Ember did deliveries: strangers conversing on the streets, the smell of fire-roasted wood, children laughing as they played together, the crackle of flames everywhere. Nobody here had a particular hurry or desperation, most enjoying their time as they walked along. To be honest, there was a certain satisfaction of not having to worry about managing stock or customers, and speeding along while feeling the wind on her face and flames only added to the sense of freedom. 

Ember finally arrived at the intersection, driving only a little further onto Lead Avenue to find the Rosts, walking their newborn. “As ordered,” she said, handing them their bottle of flame oil from atop her flamecycle. She paused to watch as they fed the baby flame, who let out a massive, fiery burp after finishing the bottle. Ember gave the sight a short smile, but quickly resumed her journey with a “Gotta go, going for Dad’s record!” 

On her way through the backroads, a horse-drawn carriage carrying large bundles of wood blocked her way, advancing sluggishly through the street. Ember growled.  

“Move it!” she shouted, hoping the driver would listen, but to no avail. She huffed, twisting the accelerator and surging onto the various boxes and materials that sat on the side of the road, granting her just enough room to squeeze by and jump directly in front of the slow-moving carriage, scaring the horses into rearing and whinnying as she soared through the air. Ember smirked, taking off her goggles in almost a hat-tipping motion toward the surprised driver. With a good-natured Firish taunt of “ Shà sharísha! ”, she hit the stone road and sped off. 

The sun was slowly setting as Ember delivered a few dozen logs to a few different shopfronts and households, usually the last deliveries she made. Her final—and favorite—delivery was to the little firework shop owned by Mrs. Pozharin that was just a street or so away from home. The kids there always lit the fireworks Ember delivered, and many of the people on that street looked forward to it. She handed off the box and the three kids swarmed around, igniting the rockets and sending sparkling flowers of blue, green, and purple into the air. Ember looked up and smiled widely at the sight as she fed the flamecycle more fire to speed towards home.  

As the sky fell dark and Ember pressed on, she wondered what running the Fireplace would be like. It was practically the keystone of Firetown, having been the very first Firish building in all of Element City. Firetown had slowly grown around it, even becoming large enough that a petition to close off water to the canals surrounding the area was granted. It was Ember’s duty to ensure that this icon of Firetown would endure into the future. Yet, her temper kept holding her back. She wondered if she would ever be rid of it.  

Firetown was by no means small, but it was certainly the smallest of the four sectors of Element City. Still, it was expansive enough to make Ember’s streak of deliveries a three hour-long journey. As she halted outside The Fireplace, she withdrew her heat from the flamecycle and whispered another word in Firish to the steel rod, the construct disappearing back into it.  

She burst into the store with a triumphant laugh, removing her goggles with one hand and throwing and catching the rod with the other. “Winner winner, charcoal din-”  

Ember cut herself off with a gasp as she noticed her father leaning over the counter, sound asleep. That’s just like Dad, to work himself asleep at the counter. She smiled softly at his snoring form, removing the red bowl of paint from the counter and gently taking the paintbrush from his hand. She draped a steel wool blanket over his shoulders, causing him to wake and cough more soot into the air. Ember couldn’t deny the concern that bubbled up in her stomach. “Head to bed,” she said, wiping off a bit of red paint that had burnt against his cheek. “I’ll close things up.” 

“Still have much to prepare for Red Dot Sale,” Bernie replied. 

“Dad, I’ll take care of it. You need to rest,” Ember said softly. Some part of her whispered, It’s your fault he can’t rest, that he hasn’t retired. She shook it away, though not without a glare flashing across her face, thankfully unnoticed by her Àshfá .  

Bernie glanced toward the candle clock Ember had set earlier that day, only to witness its flame snuffing out before his eyes, having reached the candle’s end. “How?” he asked. 

Ember smirked. “I learned from the best.”  

They both laughed, Ember’s chuckling light and bright and Bernie’s low and hearty, but Bernie quickly trailed off into a series of sooty coughs. He sighed, wandering toward the Blue Flame’s brazier. 

“I am old. I can’t do this forever.” He pulled a wood stick from beside the brazier. “Now that you’ve beaten my time, there’s only one thing you haven’t done.” He took Ember’s hand in his. “Tomorrow, I sleep in, and I want you to run shop for Red Dot Sale.” He looked up at her, eyes glimmering with hope. 

“Seriously? By myself?” Ember asked in surprise and anticipation.  

“If you can do that without losing your temper,” Bernie replied, breaking his stick in half and handing her a piece. “It will show me you are able to take over.” Ember clutched the stick close to herself, awash in hesitant feelings that slowly gave way to elation and desire to please her beloved father. “You got it, Àshfá ,” she eventually said. 

The Fire man smiled, holding his stick close and closing his eyes, saying a silent prayer from his heart before offering both stick and prayer to the Blue Flame. He started walking toward the stairs. She followed him for a few steps. “I won’t let you down, I swear. You’ll see.” Bernie let out an affectionate hm before pulling his daughter in for a tight hug. “Good daughter,” he replied, and Ember let him go, watching him travel up the stairs until his light disappeared from the stairwell. 

“Yes!” she cried quietly with a soft squeal and giggle, pumping her arms and tapping her feet until she was once more in front of the Blue Flame. She held her stick close, whispering a simple but earnest prayer: 

“Blue Flame, please, let this go my way.”  

Ember gently placed the stick into the Blue Flame, watching its fire rise higher as though to say, “It will all be okay, in the end.” She remembered the many times she had prayed to the Blue Flame as a child to be able to run the shop one day. Maybe tomorrow would be the day to prove she could! Yet, uncertainty still simmered within her.  

She continued watching the Blue Flame flicker and glow, looking at it with a strange pensiveness in her eyes. “Do you think I can do it?” she asked. Not that she really expected the mysterious fire to reply. Ember’s mind had always interpreted anything it did as element-like. She had often “talked” to the Blue Flame after her prayers from a very young age, and liked to pretend she had a grasp on its somewhat ominous “personality”, though she figured it was simply an unconscious reflection of her more pessimistic side. 

The Flame crackled loudly in response to her question, and Ember somehow took it to mean “A deserved fate arrives tomorrow.” That certainly didn’t help her nerves, but it wasn’t an actual response anyways. Ember shook her head, clearing her mind of such thoughts, and went to finish closing the store.  

She made sure the money was put in the right places, and that every product was stocked and shelved. Ember always saved working with the Firish knives for last. Most of them were for cooking, but one or two were made to be carried when traveling, just in case a monster attacked. It was owlbear migration season, after all. Sometimes Ember would sharpen the blades, or even inscribe a sigil-phrase for durability. It helped them sell better, even though her Àshfá would probably tell her to leave them alone. Still, working with the knives was always calming, and helped her relieve some anxiety about tomorrow.  

Ember slotted the last knife into the display, satisfied with its sharpened edge, and left to her own bedroom, the Blue Flame casting its azure light on the wall behind her. She needed her rest.  

After all, tomorrow was the big day.  

Chapter Text

As the sun rose on another day, Ember finished dotting each on-sale product with a dot of red paint. The store’s candle clock had reached the first line, meaning it was time to open up shop. 

She approached the door, unconsciously fiddling with her metal apron. The words “Red Dot Sale” were painted on it lovingly in red lettering. “Take a breath,” she said to herself. She inhaled deeply, then let out a steady stream of air, before firmly adjusting her apron. “Calm as a candle.” 

Ember glanced through the door’s window only to see a crowd of Fire people outside, clamoring to be let in. “Flame above!” she whisper-yelled, flinching backwards out of surprise. She took a deep breath, calming herself, then put on a smile and pulled the door open. “Morning! Welcome to The Fireplace!” she called as the crowd streamed into the store. The large number of customers gave Ember a bit of anxiety, but she exhaled deeply, focusing, and went to make sure everyone had what they needed. 

That’s where it all started going downhill. 

Customer after customer had questions to ask or simply did something annoying. One woman was tugging at the bottom block in a stack of cinderblocks, and Ember had to explain that they were all the same, so one from the top would be better for the customer. A man tried to eat his hot log before paying for it. Another customer tried to buy a can of red paint she had left out, despite it being on the floor rather than shelved. Yet another asked whether certain ceramics were fragile, but carelessly shoved them into her arms all together so that most of them broke. That one in particular left Ember with her flames flickering an angry pink and a half-stifled scream of frustration. 

Unfortunately, since most of the customers had entered at the same time, a lot of them finished shopping at the same time. They were beginning to crowd around the counter, pelting her with questions about products and returns, and what to do if they broke something, and if they could test some tools, and on and on and on as Ember began to breathe in and out and in and out, faster and faster trying to keep calm, flames burning that painful purple. She could NOT have this happen today of all days. Take breath. Make connection, she tried to think to herself through the noise, but the customers were too much and she could keenly sense herself huffing rapidly, about to explode, so she clapped her hands over her mouth before she could start yelling, scrambling urgently away toward the stairs to the basement. “Be back in five minutes!” she managed to shout semi-calmly as she rushed downstairs. She was hyperventilating now, her form stained almost entirely purple and the pressure building at an extreme rate as she skidded into the basement. 

Ember screamed . 

It was the loudest sound she had ever produced, rage and frustration spilling over and bursting out violently in a raw, furious cry. Fire exploded from her with a roar, a ferocious wave of painfully powerful heat and light striking the walls of the basement with a surprising amount of force. 

After what felt like forever, Ember’s voice faded. She bent over a bit, gasping harshly for breath as she clung to her knees, barely noticing that some of the basement's contents had caught fire. A rumble shook her out of her exhaustion, coming from the side, and she looked toward the terracotta walls as the sound became louder and louder. Before she could react, the clay shattered outward, revealing thin copper pipes that burst open, sending a violent stream of water into the basement directly towards her. 

She barely managed to dodge, the water dousing a chunk of her face as she sidestepped, groaning in pain and clutching at the wound. It wasn’t over, though: Ember could tell something was about to happen, so she leapt back, onto one of the basement’s partially destroyed stone pillars. Her family had never known what the large amount of pillars had been for, but she quickly found herself thankful for their presence as more water burst from the walls, knocking down the Lumen family portrait and causing the water level to increase drastically. Panic surged through her, and she quickly grabbed a spare rain parasol to shield herself as she pushed toward the water.  

Reaching the first pipe, Ember discarded her parasol and grabbed the part of the pipe that had bulged out, heating it and straining to force it shut with her other hand by bunching the metal before twisting it off. She knew it would be better to smooth off the twisted bit, but there was no time. She leapt to the next pipe, grunting with exertion as she closed it off and gave it a twist.  

By the time Ember had repeated this process another three times to seal the remaining pipes, the water in the basement would have gone up to her thighs if she could have stood in it. She panted, trying to catch her breath, but noticed the disaster that surrounded her: boxes and sacks floated about aimlessly, many of the wooden shelves that were put away due to flammability were partially submerged, and the sheer effort it would take to clean this up manifested as an unpleasantly sharp feeling in her chest.  

“Oh, no, no, no, no, no!” Ember grit her teeth, half from the pain of being partially doused, half from stress, tensing her arms angrily. “Stupid temper, not today!” She grabbed a bundle of sticks from a nearby pot that hadn’t been splashed by the water and shoved it into her mouth, crunching and swallowing so that she could regrow the wounded flame of her head, though not without some extra exertion. “What is wrong with me?!” Ember thought out loud, continuing to gesture angrily with her arms and still breathing heavily. She had ruined the Red Dot Sale. She had ruined her chance to show her Àshfá that she could run the shop. It had all gone down the drain by now, and Ember desperately wished that this water would do the same. 

Before Ember could figure out what to do next, movement in the water caught her attention. It shifted her family portrait, sliding it across the surface of the water before her. She leaned over it, watching with bated breath. Is this sorcery? What exactly came out from that pipe? It slid to a stop, tiny twin spurts of water pushing up from in front of it. Ember hardly had time to guess what was going on before loud sobbing cut through the air, accompanied by a watery form emerging from the water, tears spurting from its eyes.  

A Water element. 

He was a little stocky, clothed in a simple leather chestplate streaked with blue on the sleeves and hem. A belt was secured around his waist, and a small mace and sling hung from it. She had no earthly idea how both the chestplate or his weapons had fit through the pipes. Yet, it was a badge that was pinned on the right of his chest that caught Ember’s eye. It was a sleek dark blue, almost black, with an off-white crescent moon next to a few simplistic white embellishments. Despite her anger and dismay at the current mess, a small part of Ember, one that remained mostly unheard, had to admit that this young man was rather curious.  

It also helped such curiosity that he was currently bawling over her family portrait. 

As it began to click how strange this all was, Ember’s thoughts fell from her lips: “What the…?” The Water man’s crying subsided a little as he looked over the painting. “What a happy family,” he said in a watery voice, sniffling. He turned it around, pointing at a figure in the portrait and revealing that it was still intact despite the flood (Ember would thank the stars above for the preservation spell the painter had used). “Is that you and your dad?” 

It was, in fact, Ember and her dad (and her mom). “I love dads,” the Water element said, not waiting for a response. He looked down at the painting again and gasped, noticing the words written on the side of the canvas. “And it was painted for your birthday!” he sobbed, spraying tears everywhere.  

*** 

Wade Ripple couldn’t help it. The painting just evoked too much emotion in him, and he continued to sob.  

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” The young Fire woman in front of him said indignantly, shielding herself from his spray of tears. She was short-ish, wearing a simple but elegant black chainmail-like dress with metal squares instead of chain that almost looked purple in the reflection of her own light. Her form was constantly moving, flames flickering with yellows, oranges and reds. Her eyes, like her fire, gently shifted between deep crimson and bright amber. There was a heat that rolled off of her, and he didn’t know whether to like it or not since it felt weird on the water that made up his form. He blinked, then remembered where he was and did his best to pull it together. 

“I don’t know! I was searching for a canal leak on the other side of the river and got sucked in!” He clutched the painting close, struggling to hold it all in, but remembered what was at stake. “This is bad, I can’t lose another job.” He sucked in a breath, then let it out. 

“I just can’t seem to find my flow,” he confessed, dropping the portrait and rising into a standing position. 

“Dang!” came a comment from the Fire woman in front of him. He looked over himself, raising his arms and twisting around, realizing his form bulged with extra water. He groaned. “That pipe squished me all out of shape.” Thankfully, with some vigorous shaking and a hearty blblblblb , the water flew off of him and he returned to his normal form, his chestplate shrinking to fit his usual size. “That’s better.” he said, smiling. 

The Fire element did not return his smile. “Dude, just get out of here!” she said, desperation and anger lacing her voice. “I gotta clean this mess up before my dad sees what I did!” 

Wade hesitated, cringing slightly and releasing the painting. “Ooh.” Part of him screamed to let it go, to just leave, but the logical part of him knew that he would be late to file his report on the leak already, and it would come out what had happened, which would most certainly lose him what was probably his last job he had if he didn’t create a separate report for this.  

Head Officer Gale Cumulus had already given him an earful for not writing up the invasive bamboo blossoms in Greenvale. “Sorry, Wade,” she said afterward. “But you’re in the inspection branch. If you see a violation, you write it up. Doing that keeps the city safe just as well as any soldier or city guard does. If you keep turning a blind eye to every problem that has a sob story behind it, I’ll have to have you removed from the Lunar Guard. ” He had nodded tearily, begging to keep his rank despite its mediocre status. Floating from job to job seemed to be his fate, but Wade always tried to cling to his current job for as long as he could. So he steeled himself and wandered over to where he had burst out of the wall.  

“Actually, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to write a report for this.” He tried to hold it in, but tears streamed down his cheeks as he spoke, removing his enchanted quill and scroll from a pocket. With a heavy heart, Wade scrawled down the basic format, reminding himself to note the location when exiting, and began to bullet point the issues with what appeared to be an inbuilt hypocaust system with water. It looked like the explosion he had heard while in the pipes had provided enough heat (and pressure) to remove not only the blockage he had gotten stuck on, but to begin pumping water to be heated. Yet, this hypocaust seemed to be intended to pump and heat air to warm the building rather than water. He’d have to double check with the artificers on this one. 

“A ticket?” the Fire woman asked.  

“Yeah,” Wade replied, rapidly unrolling more parchment and continuing to write each and every violation even as his heart begged him not to. “I’m from the inspector branch of Element City’s Lunar Guard, and this hypocaust is not up to code.” 

“I sucked a Lunar Guardsman into our pipes?” she said, clearly realizing the significance of the title. A bit of purple flickered at the edge of her flames. Wade had never seen Fire people with purple in their flames, and had no idea what it meant, but he thought it was sort of pretty. 

“I know. Ironic, right?” he said sadly, trying to make the situation a bit lighter for both of them as he poked through the copper pipes that were meant for air or water flow.  

“Stop messing with that!” she said.  

“Well, I need to make sure it’s solid!” 

“Everything’s solid,” she retorted, watching him as he crossed the room. “I should know. My dad rebuilt this place himself.” 

Wade paused, his conscience tugging at him. “Wait, your dad did?”  

“Yes! With his bare hands, every brick and board. It was a ruin when he found it.” 

“Wow,” he replied. “He did this all by himself? Without permits?” His heart was aching terribly to have to do such an abhorrent thing, but he continued to write, forcing himself onward for the sake of his job.  

“Uh…” Clearly the Fire element was regretting her words. She gulped nervously.  

“I’m gonna have to write that up too.” He was crying again, partially out of sadness with himself. “First, I’m sucked into a hypocaust, and now I have to write citations that could get this place shut down.” His crying was practically a fountain at this point. “Oh gosh, it’s just too much!” 

“Shut us down?” she said, anger rising from her words.  

Wade tried to not mind her anger and his sorrow and failed miserably, instead opting to write faster. “I know, it’s awful!” 

“No, you can’t shut us down, please! This is a big day for me, it’s our Red Dot Sale!” she replied, desperation filling her voice once more as she stretched her arms to try and grab the parchment away from him. Being Fire meant that she had surprising reach, as she was mostly unrestricted by things like how much mass her form contained. Still, he was quick to flow away from each and every attempt, surprised that not only his unused combat training had gotten a little use after all, but someone actually had the courage to resist a member of the Lunar Guard, inspection branch or not. Wade scanned the environment around him, thinking hard and looking for an exit. The stairs would probably lead into the main shop, but that open window looks like it leads outside, to the road.   

“Hey, take it easy,” he said, purposefully backing toward the window, still writing with tears rolling down his face. The amount of violations he had to record had basically shattered whatever was left of his heart into pieces. 

“Get back here!” the Fire woman called. She started moving toward him, but hindered by the water, had to use the floating debris as stepping stones. He had no such disadvantage, and quickly clambered atop a shelf to reach the window, regret filling the itty-bitty remnants of his heart. “Sorry, I have to get these to HQ before the end of my shift!” With that, Wade dove out of the narrow space of the window and into the street.  

*** 

Ember groaned in frustration, standing beneath the window that the intruder had just dove out of. She looked down at her Red Dot Sale apron, weighing the hefty decision before her as quickly as she could: pursue the Water guy, return to the shop to manage the customers (who were probably brawling at this point), or tell her Àshfá that she had flooded the basement and ask for help. Ember’s pride struck down the third option. She could not tell her dad that she had ruined this chance. And if that Water guy submitted those reports, there might not be a shop left to run.  

“Flame!” she exclaimed through gritted teeth. She would not let The Fireplace be extinguished. She would not let this mistake go down without a fight. So she tore off the apron, grabbed her cloak from nearby in the water, and leapt out the window. 

Glancing side to side, Ember noticed the Water guy rushing toward the aqueduct. Thankfully, he hadn’t gotten too far, and she raced after him, feet pounding against cobblestone. “Get back here!” she yelled. He was surprisingly agile, and Ember just barely lost him as he went up the stairs. She sprinted up after him, dodging passerby, and making it up to the main platform only to see him hop onto a waiting longship far ahead of her.  

Thankfully, the longship was part of a group of three and hadn’t started moving yet. Ember glanced up, noticing that it was almost certainly headed for the main part of Element City. The rowers tapped their oars on the bottom of their boats, starting the magic propulsion systems. Ember breathed heavily, bracing herself as she ran alongside the longships, picking up speed, then dove for the last boat in the chain with a yell, barely managing to land in the back of the boat with a loud thud . The passengers murmured at this, some looking at her curiously and others glaring. She noticed that there were no other Fire people on board, but determination snuffed the thought out before she could start to worry, pulling her cloak around herself. 

Ember had to move carefully to avoid touching any Water or Earth, so as to not cause any damage. She pulled her cloak tighter, gently stepping around a Water rower, but stumbled as the longship took a tight turn, accidentally making contact with an Earth passenger and incinerating the grass that covered his body. “Hey!” he yelled, and Ember could only respond with a “Sorry!” as she continued through the longship. Reaching the end, she pumped her arms, hyping herself up, and in one not-so-fluid motion, she clambered onto the boat’s dragon head and leapt forward, barely managing to grab onto the sternpost of the next. As she hung on, Ember’s foot grazed the water in the aqueduct, and she winced as it doused a bit of fire. She could see the docking platform for City Square getting closer. She was running out of time. She hauled herself onto the side of the longship, sprinting on the edge towards the final boat and praying she wouldn’t fall and jumped as hard as she could, barely making it into the boat but faceplanting directly next to the Water man she was chasing, a little puff of flame escaping from her sides. He yelped. She got to her feet, grabbing at the scroll he held in his hand, but he dodged backwards as the boat came to a stop, and leapt onto the dock with a shout of “Hands off!”  

Ember hopped onto the dock to follow, but found he had disappeared into the crowd. The sound of horses and loud conversations and merchants shouting their wares surrounded her alongside stone buildings and spires stretching so dizzyingly high they could scrape the sky. She shook her head, still searching for any hint of the Water man among crowds of Water, Air, and Earth. On leaning over the railing, she spotted him, casually strolling away as though those reports he made weren’t about to destroy her life.  

“Stop!” Ember yelled, and dashed to her left, down the stairs, vaulting over part of the railing and managing to catch herself on the ground with one hand, but she quickly lost her balance, falling backwards down the stairs but once more barely regaining her balance before she could crash into an Earth pedestrian. She rushed forward across the stairs and awkwardly slid down the rail, almost falling off more than once.  

As she hit the floor, Ember continued sprinting after the Water man, who looked behind and realized he was still being chased, picking up his pace. A small group of children wandered into Ember’s path, kicking a ball around. Unwilling to sacrifice her momentum, she pulled out her rain parasol, opening it, and flared her flames as hot as they could go, warming the air beneath the parasol and lifting her into the air. A few children looked up at her in awe. The parasol began to catch fire, and she closed it to snuff out the flame and landed with a clumsy tuck and roll. She inhaled sharply, eyes still on the Water man ahead of her, who stopped suddenly before squeezing his form into a thin gap between two buildings. 

Ember gasped in surprise, skidding to a halt in front of the gap. If she looked closer, she could see him desperately scooting away as fast as he could, scroll still in hand. She breathed in and out quickly a few times, bracing herself, and dove into the little gap.  

It was painfully claustrophobic, having her form squeezed into an unnaturally thin space, and she could tell it was the same for him, being able to hear him breathing heavily as he sloshed away. His hand with the scroll was practically right in front of her, and she stretched out a hand to grab it but missed as he fully emerged from the other side. To her surprise, the scroll, though still in his grasp, was stuck in the gap! She strained, fingers barely managing to graze it before he tugged, popping it out of the gap and out of Ember’s reach, much to her frustration.  

They were on the streets outside of some kind of government stronghold now, and she had to dodge a few fast-moving carriages as they approached it. A few merchants were set up outside the building, and an idea hit Ember as she continued the chase. She grabbed a bottle of chili oil from a stand she passed by, much to the vendor’s dismay, and managed to overtake the Water man, jumping in front of him only a few feet from the entrance. He leapt back with another yelp, clutching his scroll to his chest. Ember uncorked the bottle, spilling its contents into a large arc on the ground, then stepped on it to set it aflame, straining to incorporate the newly-made fire into her form so that she was now a wall of flames, tall and wide enough to block the man from entering the building.  

“Come on, guy. You can’t get through this, so it is time to hand them over!” Ember yelled, confident that this was the end, that she had won.  

The Water man simply looked sadly at her. “Oh boy, I’m sorry. This is gonna be really disappointing for you.” He concentrated, taking a deep breath, murmured something, then stepped forward and disappeared , leaving only mist in his wake. A pang of panic shot through Ember, and a small poof from behind caused her to glance behind her, only to see him reappear in a cloud of mist above the ground with a yelp of surprise before faceplanting directly into the cobbled stone beneath him. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” Ember said, realizing the implications. He stumbled to his feet and climbed up the stairs. “Sorry!” he said, pushing open the thick metal gate in front of him.  

“No, no, no, no, please, no!” Ember, weak from maintaining such a large form, could only slip out of it and onto the stairs on all fours, begging him to stop. He walked through the gates, closing them behind him. Her hand fell onto the metal of the gate, and no matter how she tried, she was too weak to push through it. “You don’t understand,” she said. It was all over. The Fireplace would be no more, and it was All. Her. Fault. 

*** 

Wade’s guilt weighed heavily on him as he tore off the piece of the scroll with the report on it. He rolled it up slowly, tying it neatly with a piece of string, then placed it on the magic circle inscribed on the stone table before him. “Fern Grouchwood,” he said for the spell, readying to send it to the head of processing. The circle lit up, and he tapped the rolled up parchment, which vanished, sent off to the processing quarters.  

A glimmer of light caught Wade’s eye, and he noticed the ethereal, iridescent caustics scattered across the walls. They shone gently, casting white and rainbow around the whole room.“Woah,” he said, leaning in for a closer look. A faint voice shook him out of his thoughts: 

“This shop is my dad’s dream.” He turned around to see that the Fire woman who had been chasing him was collapsed on all fours on the stairs outside. Her fire was hardly there at all, only hinted at with a dim yellow near the center and hazy red on the outer edges. “If I’m the reason it gets shut down, it will kill him.” she said softly, sorrow heavy in her voice.  

“Oh,” Wade said, having instinctually made his way to the gates, her light reflected in his eyes. That was the final straw for him. The job didn’t matter. The rank didn’t matter. He couldn’t doom someone, even a stranger, to something like that. 

“He will never trust me to take over,” the Fire woman said.  

“Why didn’t you say that before?” Wade asked, holding back tears as he pushed open the gate. 

Her flames slowly returned to their normal bright reds, oranges, and yellows as she picked herself up from the stone stairs and brushed off her dress, pushing her cloak back over her shoulders. She cleared her throat, looking up at him with a hopeful shine in her eyes. “Does this mean you’ll tear up the report?”  

Wade’s heart fell a little, remembering that the document was already sent. “I mean, I would, but I already sent them over to the processing quarters.” 

She growled in frustration, fire flashing a bright purple.  

( Ah, so that’s what purple fire means, a small part of Wade thought.)  

“But! I can take you there so that you can plead your case, would that work?” he said, holding his hands out reassuringly. She looked back at him with a bit of that hope still flickering in her eyes, and nodded, a single, almost invisible slant of the head. 

“Great! Then let’s get going. Follow me!” Wade sighed a breath of relief as they went deeper into the Lunar Guard Headquarters.  

*** 

Ember was astounded by how exotic everything was in here. The ceiling was high, and ornate iron chandeliers hung at certain intervals. Torches were placed on walls and lit with fire that wasn’t hot. Banners with the same emblem as the one depicted on the Water man’s pin hung from both the wall and ceiling.  

“So, what’s your name?” The man’s voice shook her from her thoughts.  

“Ember,” she replied curtly.  

“My name’s Wade. Wade Ripple. It’s nice to officially meet you! It’s kinda funny how we met, if you think about it.” He shrugged as he talked. “I mean, I’m a low-rank Lunar Guardsman who got sucked into an out-of-code hypocaust, and you’re a shopkeeper who wants to make her dad proud, just like how I wanted to make my dad proud!” He placed a hand to his chin. “Feels like it could be straight out of a play, or even a book. Funny, right?” 

“Hilarious,” Ember replied dryly. It was going to be a long day. 

Wade had been looking at her as he had semi-rambled, and just now looked up into the long hallway they were walking through. “Aw, man! I wasn’t meaning to pass through here. Little detour. My bad.” 

Ember huffed, but a wall of bright colors caught her attention. A mural was elegantly painted onto the stones, and as she looked up at it, she realized that it was a depiction of the Water Primordial. Of course, she had only seen pictures or paintings of the Water Primordial in storybooks alongside the other three Primordials, but the grand figure was instantly recognizable.  

While the rest of the mural was paint, the Water Primordial was made of a shimmering blue coral-like substance integrated directly into the depiction. He held a sword to the sky, and the crescent moon shone above him as a small crowd of Water elements stood in the background watching, some armored and some not, among a small village. A plaque beneath the mural told Ember that it depicted the founding of the Lunar Guard. 

Wow. They’ve been around for this long? Ember supposed she had to respect such a legacy. If anything, it wasn’t unlike the Blue Flame. 

Unconsciously, she wandered to the other mural in the hallway, which showed all four Primordials, Air, Water, Earth, and Fire, creating the world. Like Water Primordial, the others were made of a different material incorporated into the mural: Air was a white woolen substance, Earth was a rock gleaming with flecks of gold, and Fire was an iridescent red-orange glass. The Primordials had their hands outstretched, each offering a bit of their own element to help the new world along. “Woah,” she murmured in awe. Her eyes traced the outline of the Fire Primordial more than once, and she gently put a hand against the likeness of her ancestor, feeling the cool touch of glass on her fingers.  

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Ember whipped around, taking her hand away to see Wade reverently looking up at the mural alongside her, a small smile on his face. She gave him a slight nod, face neutral, holding back the true extent of how she felt. “Yeah.” 

Now is not the time to get distracted! Ember turned away from the mural. “Where to?” she asked curtly.  

“Right!” he said, a little nervously. “This way.” He walked on, and Ember followed. 

After a walk up another staircase and down a few more hallways, the two found themselves in front of a door that Wade pushed open, revealing a room full to the brim with foliage.  

*** 

They pushed into the jungle that was Fern Grouchwood’s office, Wade walking in front and Ember following behind. Wade enjoyed the humidity here, and the abundant plants gave everything a natural touch. Ember, on the other hand, seemed tense and unsettled. Her arms were stiff at her sides like she was afraid of touching anything. Wade felt bad for her, having to be so cautious and anxious in such a pretty environment, but there wasn’t much he could do to help other than push aside a few leaves and branches as he walked ahead.   

After a few more paces, they emerged into a more open space where Fern, a large, overgrown Earth element with a lampshade mustache made of reeds, was sitting at his desk, sorting scrolls and sending a few off with muttered words and quick, simple gestures. He was a master of Conjuration magic, which made him a natural fit for this job. Wade often wished he was a natural fit himself, for anything. Instead, he had to settle for stumbling from thing to thing, hoping to find something eventually. He pushed aside the negative thoughts and approached Fern. 

“Hey, Fern!” Wade greeted. “How you doin’?” 

“Living the dream,” the Earth man replied in a dull, drawling voice. 

“You know that report I juuust gave you from Firetown?”  

Fern raised the scroll, preparing to send it. “I was about to send it to Head Officer Cumulus and then get sprayed for feywild rot.” 

“Wait!” both Ember and Wade cried simultaneously. Fern paused.  

“Tell him what you told me about your dad and letting him down,” Wade whispered.  

“No. That’s personal,” she replied indignantly. 

“It really got to me,” Wade explained. “He might feel it too!” He didn’t understand her hesitation. Wouldn’t it be better to try and save her shop by talking about letting her dad down than by actually letting her dad down by letting the reports go? 

“Her dad will be sup-,” he began on Ember’s behalf, only to be cut off by her hands in front of his mouth. 

“Super disappointed in her,” he managed to continue, even as she shoved a few quills from Fern’s desk into his mouth. 

“Stop it!” Ember said anxiously. Yet, Fern had turned toward Wade, seemingly interested. He needed to continue, for her sake, and her dad’s! 

“He might even be ashamed .” he said, muffled slightly by the inkwell she had plunged into his mouth, scattering ink throughout his form.  

“What are you doing?” Ember cried tensely, either not noticing or caring that Fern seemed intrigued. In fact, Fern knew Wade’s history with his own dad, and was listening intently. How could she not see that this was their chance to get the report thrown out? 

“But the main thing is, if her father can’t retire,” Wade pressed on, ignoring the rapid breathing coming from Ember. Was it just him, or was the room getting hotter? 

“It would be all Ember’s faul-”  

“STOP TALKING!”  

Ember exploded , releasing a massive shockwave of rage and fire, boiling some of Wade’s water into steam and incinerating every plant and piece of greenery in the entire room, including Fern’s hair and mustache, alongside most of the citations on his desk. Piles of ash now lined the room. 

Fern, still holding the report for Ember’s shop, put out a flame that had started on it. His desk crashed to the floor, mostly destroyed by the explosion.  Any interest he had shown for Ember’s story had been incinerated alongside his beloved plants. “Looks like I’m going home early today,” he drawled, making the hand motions of a minor teleportation spell. The scroll vanished.  “Expect to be shut down within a week. Have a good one.” 

Wade looked over at Ember, who had an unreadable expression permeating her flames that seemed almost like fearful shock. “Sorry,” he tried to offer her, but it just didn’t seem like enough. 

It was truly a shame, but Wade had tried his best to help her. But as he knew painfully well, sometimes it was harder to accept someone’s help. 

*** 

This was the worst day of Ember’s life, by far. No contest. She almost lost her temper during the Red Dot Sale and left the customers to themselves, then exploded in the basement, causing the flood and a report to be filed. And now the Lunar Guard were going to come and shut down The Fireplace soon. And she would have to break the news to her Àshfá .  

As she approached the Fireplace, a new worry took center stage: the store sign said it was closed. In the afternoon. At peak hours. 

“What?” she cried. How could this be? 

Ember rushed inside, worry turning to panic as she noticed that the lights were out and there was nobody to be seen. “Hello?” she called, the panic making its way into her voice. A loud coughing from the basement answered. 

Dad. Oh no, oh no!  

She sprinted down the stairs to the basement, and the scene that met her eyes caused her to gasp in horror. 

The walls and ceiling of the basement now fully exposed the copper pipes within, almost all of them cracked and leaking water. Both Àshfá and Àshká were toiling away to fix the damages, hardly avoiding being doused.  

“Dad!” Ember yelled. “What happened?” 

“We lucky nobody hurt. It ruined Red Dot Sale!” Bernie fumed. Ember’s heart caught in her chest. She had to tell him. 

“Did he do this?” Bernie asked, anger clear in his voice. 

“Who?” Ember asked. This was unexpected.  

“The Water guy I see you chase!” So he had seen her chasing Wade.  

“Oh, uh, um.” Ember hesitated as she made her way across the flooded basement to help. But this was a way out she had to take. “Yeah, he did. He just broke through a pipe.” She melted a leak shut. “I don’t know why. Luckily, I was able to close it off. I uh, couldn’t catch him though.” she said, looking toward her father.  

He gave her no notice as he continued fixing the leak in front of him. “Water, always trying to water us down.” he growled.  

“He was a Water person , Dad, not just water.” Ember corrected. Truthfully, she had never liked it when he talked down about Water.  

Bernie didn’t care. “Ah, same thing! And why is water in heating pipes? City shut it down years ago. There should be no water!” he yelled, gesturing angrily. He trailed off into a fit of coughs and fell off of his stool. 

“Dad!” Ember managed to catch him before he could hit the water.  

“Bernie!” Cinder said before gently escorting him to the dry stairway. He continued to cough, and she put a hand on his arm reassuringly. “We will get through this, just like before.” 

“Before?” Ember asked. Had the basement flooded before, or was it something else?  

Her parents exchanged a tired look, one that they only showed in the rare instances they would think about their past. “There is a reason we left Fire Land,” Cinder began to explain. 

Ember stilled immediately. This had to be important. They hardly talked about Fire Land. She listened hard for what her mom was about to say. 

Cinder’s gaze grew distant. “Oh, Ember. We loved it there so much. Here in Firetown, we are the only family to have a Blue Flame. But back home, every house had one. It connected us all together. 

To our traditions. Our family.  

It was a hard life, but we had a shop there too. Your father built it as a life for us. A beautiful little dream. But Fire Land is home to terrible storm dragons that live on the outskirts of the continent. One day, a storm dragon attacked our hometown, hoping to expand its territory, and our beloved shop was destroyed in the crossfire. We managed to save our Blue Flame, but all else was lost. Years of work, gone in moments. 

That was when we decided that we must leave our home to create a better life.” 

“But why?” Ember asked softly. “Why not rebuild there? Just because one dragon attacked didn’t mean another would come along.”  

Cinder shook her head. “That is what Bernie’s parents wanted. But we knew we couldn’t go through that again. Wondering each day if the greed of another storm dragon would take it all away again. We needed to go to a place without that fear.  

Your father’s parents were upset. It was the last time your Àshfá ever saw them. But we hoped and dreamed that Element City could provide us with a fresh start, one that couldn’t be destroyed again. 

That is why we came here. To build all this.” 

Ember’s gaze drifted to her Àshfá , who had a somber look on his face as he gazed at the floor. His flames burnt a subdued copper and he was unnaturally quiet. After what felt like an eternity, he rose to his feet and grabbed a cloth to continue cleaning. Something about the sight pierced Ember to her very core, igniting a new determination deep within that quickly blazed to life. She walked over and gently took the cloth from him. 

“ Àshfá , nothing will happen to this shop or the flame again. I promise.” she said softly.  

Bernie smiled wearily. “Mm.” He put his hand on her cheek. 

“Good daughter.” 

Chapter Text

The sun had just finished rising as Wade walked into the Lunar Guard Headquarters. He whistled a catchy tune he had heard from a street troubadour on his way. Today was his day off, and he was ready, no, more than ready to watch the finals of the airball tournament that was happening soon. No citations or mild moral dilemmas to worry about. Just the Windbreakers, and how they totally had this game in the bag!  

As Wade approached the barracks to grab the tokens he had purchased the other day, he felt a strong stinging heat on his enchanted satchel and looked down to see that it was on fire.  

“YOW! Fire! Fire!” Panicking, he managed to extinguish it with his watery hands, then noticed the culprit was a foot away: a pile of what looked like clothes, seemingly on fire. “Fire!” he cried, trying to stamp it out before it could set anything else aflame. That is, until it started moving. 

“Hey, HEY!” it shouted, rising angrily into a more humanoid shape, chainmail cloak pulled around it. It was her! That one lady, from yesterday. Right, her name was Ember. Why was she curled up next to the barracks? 

“Oh, sorry!” Wade said, surprised. “You’re so hot.” He blew on the charred part of the satchel, patting it down a bit. Not that it would fix the blackened spot the fire had left behind. 

“Excuse me?” Ember asked incredulously, shooting him a glare. 

“No!” Wade said, stumbling over himself to try and explain. He raised his hands in mock surrender, dripping with embarrassment. “No, I mean like, you’re smoking- No, I didn’t mean it like that!”  

Ember gave him a tired look. “Are you done yet?”  

“Yes, please.” he said, defeated. 

She took her cloak off, dumping it on the floor and waving him away. “I’m waiting to talk to your boss, so make like a stream and flow somewhere else.” She turned away from him with what looked like distaste, sitting down on the stone floor to wait. 

“Actually, Gale won’t be in today.” Wade said. Ember looked up in disbelief. “She’s a huge airball fan, and the Windbreakers are finally in the playoffs!” He raised his leg and pumped his arm in an impression of the Windbreakers’ cheer. “Toot toot!” 

Ember didn’t seem to appreciate this, instead holding her head with a groan. Wade was a little sad that his actions hadn’t at least made her smile a little. Well, maybe she was best left alone. “Okay, well, I just came by because I left my tokens for the game here last night.”  

To his surprise, her fire flared a little brighter at this, and she rose into a standing position. “Tokens? Like, plural?” 

*** 

As Ember gently stepped off the longship, trailing after Wade, she held both cloak and body tightly, on edge from the crowd that surrounded her and the Water man. Yet, as the arena came into view, she couldn’t help but gasp in amazement.  

Cyclone Coliseum, as Wade had called it, was breathtaking. It was massive, built from columns of marble and walls of slate. A dome of magic force surrounded it, humming slightly.  

As Wade approached the dome, he reached into his satchel and passed right through, like the rest of the crowd. Ember walked directly into the surface, bouncing off harshly with a grunt of pain. “Oh, sorry!” Wade said, seemingly surprised. “I should have told you how these work.” He stepped back through the dome as Ember rubbed where she had hit the magic construct in annoyance, then placed her hand against the surface, feeling how solid it was despite the dozens of people currently walking through it.  

“Here, you take your token in your hand and try really hard to think of the wall as not solid.” he held up the hand that was in his satchel, showing that it was holding his enchanted token. “Then you walk right through!” He then walked directly through the solid surface, to some surprise on Ember’s part. “Cool, right?” He gave her a smile. She looked at him with a mix of confusion and hesitance, bewildered at such magic, but gripped the little wooden coin tightly, tensely, though careful to keep her heat away so as not to burn it. She took a deep breath, in, and out, and pushed through the dome. 

If she thought it was loud outside the coliseum, it was nothing compared to the inside. Hundreds, maybe thousands of elements roared, cheering for the airball players that floated high above, partially contained by the dome yet still soaring through the sky. The players huffed and puffed, shooting around the arena to blow a ball into one of two hoops suspended in the air by magic. Many of the spectators (including Wade, she noticed) wore the colors of the teams they supported: light green for the Windbreakers, and pink for the other team, which Ember was pretty sure Wade had called the Stormstirrers earlier. She watched as the airball players in pink passed the ball to each other, over enemy player’s heads, and swirling to and fro to line up for a clean shot to one hoop, to the dismay of some of the crowd. Sometimes Ember wished she was able to float like that, free to fly so high that you could touch the stars in the night sky. She let the hood of her chainmail cloak down, but pulled the rest of it tighter around her shoulders. 

“So, where’s Gale?” Ember asked.  

“Up there, in that skybox.” Wade replied, pointing towards said skybox. 

In it sat a large Air element, body an angry gray and flashing with small bolts of lightning. A light green sash was visible across her chest. “Come on!” she yelled grumpily as the Stormstirrers passed the airball through the hoop, scoring yet another point.  

“Oh.” Ember said, a bit of fear and surprise running through her. She shook it away in favor of determination. “Time to cancel this report.” 

As she and Wade ascended the stairs in between the rows of seats, passing by one or two merchants selling “Toot Toot Juice” (whatever that was), Ember realized that while many of the spectators were not just Air, but Earth and Water, there were no Fire elements in the crowd at all. 

Except for Ember.  

They reached the row of seats that the skybox was in, and Ember realized that the entire row consisted of Water elements. Water elements that she would have to squeeze by. “You’ll be great! This way.” Wade said, entering the row.  

As Wade led the way, cheerfully greeting a few spectators by name with friendly waves and finger guns, Ember cautiously scooted her way through, trying to contain her natural heat but failing and receiving a few glares from the Water elements who had their forms start boiling. She still apologized for every step she took: “Excuse me, sorry. Pardon me. Fire girl coming through.” 

Thankfully, she managed to make it to Gale’s skybox just as the Air element cried loudly into the arena. “BREAK SOME WIND!” The cloudy officer looked even stormier up close. Her form was paradoxically prickly and puffy at the same time. 

“Hi Gale! How you doing?” Wade asked, sitting down in an empty seat near his boss.  

“Look at the score!” Gale said, gesturing angrily to the scoreboard. It was a large projection of light, and the numbers indicated that the Windbreakers were losing by a large margin. “What do you think?” she leaned forward. “Blow the ball , not the game !” she roared.  

Ember didn’t understand what was so important about numbers about a ball being blown around. There was a report to be canceled. She took a deep breath and tugged on her cloak. “Yeah, so uh, Gale. My name is Ember Lumen. My family runs a Fire shop. Wade wrote up a report about us yesterday-” 

A loud whistle cut her off, and Gale erupted, discharging a burst of wind around her that blew over Wade’s and Ember’s faces. “What kind of call was that!?” she shouted, lightning crackling from her form. She sunk further into her seat, glowering at the game and glancing back at Ember. “Oh, Lumen? Yeah, a Fire shop with thirty total violations according to Wade’s report.”  

“Thirty?!” Ember said, fire flaring magenta as she fixed Wade with a look of rage. The Water man only chuckled nervously in reply.  

“Anyway,” Ember continued calmly, turning back to Gale. “Friend, I was hoping we could work something out.” 

Another loud whistle echoed through the coliseum as the green-clad fans booed. More lightning erupted from Gale’s body. “Come on, judge! Are your eyes in the back of your head!?” To Ember’s surprise, the judge in charge of determining rule breaks had his eyes literally pop to the back of his head to glare at Gale. 

“Oh, no!” Wade said, disappointed.  

Ember didn’t really care. Why were these two upset over one measly point? “Yeah, bummer. Oh yeah. Okay, so, the thirty citations-” 

“Do you mind?” Gale snarled, turning to the Fire woman. “There’s a game going on, fireball.” 

That. Is. It. “Actually, I do mind,” Ember said, voice threateningly low. She moved from her seat to block Gale’s view of the game with her magenta form. “This is my life we’re talking about. Not just some game .” She could feel her fire getting hotter and hotter, pressure building.  

“Some game? This is the playoffs. So forgive me if I don’t want to hear a sob story about the problems of some little shop!” Gale thundered, now in Ember’s face. 

Ember’s fire crackled dangerously purple. “That little shop matters way more than a bunch of overrated, overpaid cloud puffs blowing some ball around.”  

Gale was staring her down like an angry bull, almost nose to nose. “I dare you,” Gale said, voice low and dangerous. “Say ‘cloud puffs’ one more time.” 

Ember obliged, enunciating each syllable slowly and clearly: “Cloud. Puffs.” 

Gale’s clouds grew almost black, lightning flashing within. A thunderous growl left her lips. Ember flared, purple flames hissing as they grew taller and brighter. She growled right back, unwilling to back down before a cry from Wade diverted their attention. 

“Oh, no! Lutz!” The spectators in green booed loudly as a Windbreakers player with the name Lutz sewed onto his clothing failed to defend his team’s hoop, the airball smashing into him and dispersing his form briefly. The booing grew louder as the score changed to reflect his failure, and Lutz hung his head in shame, floating away. 

“Lutz, man.” Wade said, pain in his voice. “He’s been in such a funk because his mom has been sick.” 

As the player named Lutz returned to the game and managed to catch the airball, he immediately had it snatched away. The entire stadium booed loudly, and Lutz’s shoulders visibly sagged, even as he continued to play. 

“That is so not cool!” Wade cried. “He’s doing his best!” He surged onto the railing, and with a loud cry, fought off the booing with a triumphant: 
 
“WE LOVE YOU, LUTZ!” 

Ember cringed, hiding her face in her cloak. Was this guy crazy? Why would he do such a thing in front of all these strangers? 

Even through the booing, his voice came out on top, cracking slightly but attracting the attention of Lutz himself. “LUTZ! WE LOVE YOU, LUTZ!” 

Some spectators looked at Wade like he was crazy. But to Ember’s surprise, he didn’t seem to care. He motioned for everyone to start chanting. “We love you, Lutz! Come on, everybody! We love you, Lutz! Everybody!” 

Ember was so sure that nobody would listen. But slowly, a small group of Water boys started splash-clapping. “We love you, Lutz! We love you, Lutz!” 

Then their parents joined in. “We love you, Lutz!” 

Then the row. “We love you, Lutz!” 

Then the section. “We love you, Lutz!” 

To Ember’s utter astonishment, the entire stadium was now cheering for this singular airball player: “WE LOVE YOU, LUTZ! WE LOVE YOU, LUTZ! WE LOVE YOU, LUTZ!” 

In the middle of the coliseum, Lutz looked at Wade and Ember’s section with a smile and a new spark in his eyes. His form puffed up a little more.  

With a hearty, drawn out “Woooaaaahh…” Wade started a wave, an actual one! Like something Ember thought she would only see in the ocean. The rest of the crowd echoed his cry, Water spectators joining the wave as Ember watched in awe and fascination. She had never seen anything like this! How incredible! 

She quickly realized that the wall of water was approaching her and just barely managed to open her rain parasol to shield herself from the water that splashed across the entire row, soaking Air, Earth, and Water alike. To her own surprise, Ember found herself watching Lutz, anxious of his reaction. 

Lutz huffed, puffed, then shot off with incredible speed upwards as the crowd roared in delight. He inhaled as hard as he could, vacuuming up the forms of not one, not two, but three whole players, alongside the ball, which he shot from his mouth like a cork from a bottle straight into the enemy hoop with such force that it cracked the backboard. 

The crowd roared in excitement, and unconsciously, Ember found herself cheering right alongside Wade and Gale.  

“Yeah! Way to go, Lutz!” Wade yelled as Lutz huffed, flexing for the crowd and raising his hands in victory. 

Wade turned to the excited crowd and began hi-fiving every spectator he could reach like there was no tomorrow. Even strangers weren’t safe from his enthusiasm, but they didn’t mind. Everyone was ecstatic over the game. How did he do that? All these people, interacting happily with someone they don’t even know. What a strange guy.  

With a sloosh, Wade turned to hi-five Ember, and she flinched back abruptly. He realized his mistake with his hand still held up. “Oh.” But he managed to bounce back by hi-fiving himself, albeit awkwardly. She simply clasped her hands and smiled tightly. Like I thought. Strange.  

Twenty home-team scores (half of which were from Lutz) and an unbelievable Windbreaker victory later, Ember, Wade, and Gale walked out of the coliseum alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of fans buzzing with excitement. 

“Woohoo! What a comeback!” Gale yelled, pumping her arms excitedly. Gone was the darkness from her clouds and the lightning from her face. Ember couldn’t help but smile after such excitement, not to mention seeing Gale in such a mood.  

“Check out who found the gift shop!” Wade hollered, bursting out of the crowd behind them. He was clad in light-green scarves, various paraphernalia, and a very tall stack of hats. Ember rolled her eyes, amused at such a sight. He looked positively stupid. 

“I’ve got to admit, that was pretty cool,” Ember said, turning to Gale as they walked. 

“You can see why I can get all churned up,” Gale said, a warm smile making its way across her clouds. She looked into the distance, seemingly reminiscing. “But as a ‘cloud puff’ who used to come here with her dad, all these wins mean a little bit more.” She turned to Ember.  

This is my chance. “And as a ‘fireball’ who’s supposed to take over my dad’s shop…” she paused, remembering the weight of the problem at hand and looking down sadly. “I sure don’t want to let him down, and I could use a win too.” 

Gale gave her a soft, understanding look in response. Wade gave a nod of approval from her other side. 

“Now, I just got to stop water from coming in,” Ember continued. The other two elements froze in their tracks. 

“Water?! In Firetown?” Gale exclaimed, clouds darkening slightly.  

“Yeah?” Ember said, hesitating.  

“Water was shut off to there years ago!” Gale said, a small bolt of lightning arcing across her form. “Oh, forget the report, I’m gonna have to take apart your dad’s shop to figure out what’s going on!”  

Now it was Ember’s turn to freeze as the possibility choked the air out of her. “You can’t!” she cried. “My dad put his whole life into that place!” 

Gale, likely distracted by this revelation, continued. “Argh, Stormbringer’s Thunder! I bet this is connected to that fluffin’ leak!” 

Wade leaned over. “Yeah, we’ve been trying to track down a leak in the city aqueducts. It’s why I was in the canal and-” he cut himself off with a gasp. “Wait! I know where I got sucked into Ember’s shop! If the leak is causing this, then Ember and I could track the water from her shop to find the source of the leak!”  

“Keep talking,” Gale said, intrigued. 

His eyes brightened. “I could call in a city crew to fix whatever we find!” 

“Yes!” Ember added. “And there’d be no need to touch my dad’s shop!”  

The two looked at Gale expectantly. Ember’s heart was in her throat. The Air woman looked back with a thoughtful stare, which slowly faded to a relaxed smile. “You’re lucky you’re a cute couple.” 

Ember flinched in surprise and confusion. What? No no no. She desperately held her hands up in a show of innocence. “Oh, we’re not a-”  

“You got until Friday,” Gale said, cutting her off with a single gesture to stop. “If you can find the leak and get a crew to fix it by then, that report is forgiven.” A menacing tone entered her voice. “If not, your dad’s shop gets shut down.” Ember felt the weight of her mistake settle on her again. Heavy. Suffocating. 

With a hearty whoop and a cheer of “Break wind!” Gale shot off into the evening sky.  

“Thank you!” Ember managed to shout, the opportunity lifting some of that weight off of her. She breathed in, flames glowing gold, and exhaled heavily with a light chuckle. She could fix this! But seeing Wade wearing all that junk made her remember that she was going to have to drag this guy with her. “Please take all that off.” 

“But I got you a hat!” he said, grin wide as he removed a pointy wizard hat in a garish shade of yellow-green from his large stack of hats. She just gave him the look of disappointment she thought she would only use on Clod as he slowly lowered the hat onto her head. 

It promptly exploded. 

Wade was now covered in char with a few accessories now submerged into his watery form, and Ember, unchanged, continued to exude as much disappointment as she could.  

“Okay.” Wade said softly, still smiling at her despite his hesitance. 

- - - 

After a short ride via longship, the two made it into Firetown. Thankfully, Wade had entertained her request and placed all of his merchandise into his satchel, which seemed to have some kind of pocket dimension inside. He had returned to wearing his leather chestplate with his sling at his side. Ember liked this infinitely more than the stupid stack of hats. 

As they approached The Fireplace, Ember turned to Wade. “Just keep out of sight, okay? It’d be a whole thing.” she warned. If Àshfá ever saw her with a Water guy, it would be such a disaster that a volcano might as well have erupted smack-dab in the middle of The Fireplace. 

“Now water upstairs?!” Bernie’s voice echoed through the nearby window. Ember and Wade peeked in to see the Fire man complaining to Cinder as he worked on the pipes. “It’s in the walls! I don’t understand!” he growled. “I fix one pipe, and another one leaks!” He was coming this way! The two ducked beneath the window as Bernie opened it, inhaling the fresh air and coughing up soot.  

“How could it be worse?” Ember cried quietly to Wade as Bernie left, worry squeezing her heart.  

“Even without heat, there must be enough water to create enough pressure to force it up into the hypocaust pipes.” Wade explained.  

“We gotta find the source,” Ember said, ready to take on the difficulty of such a task. “How did you even end up here?” she asked. That would be a good place to start. 

“Well, I was in the canals, checking the doors for leaks, when I found some water that shouldn’t have been there. Then there was this woosh of water!” Wade exclaimed, throwing his arms up for emphasis. “And I got sucked into this pipe on the side of the canal, and got stuck on some rocks before I heard this yell, and an explosion. That’s how I ended up at your place.” 

“Flame above!” Ember said, gritting her teeth. “My temper caused this.” She huffed, realizing the true extent of the task before them. “So we’re searching for water somewhere in a canal? Those canals go everywhere!” she said, gesturing angrily toward one that happened to be nearby.  

“It’s why tracking down that leak has been so dang hard,” Wade said.  

Ember sighed, deliberating over possible solutions. We could split up and walk down all the canals. No, that would take too long. Too many canals. We’re on our own, so it would be hard to convince a diviner to find the source without paying a bunch of gold pieces. She huffed. A part of her brain wandered back to how amazing that airball game was, how exciting all the action was and how fun it was to cheer loud and proud for a team. Ember tried to push it back, but kept thinking about Lutz, and about how high he had flown after Wade had pushed the crowd to cheer for him.  

He had flown so high…  

Wait. Fly. If I could get high enough, like I did with my rain parasol while chasing Wade…   

Her eyes widened in realization. I could make something using the tarp we have! Up on-  

“The roof,” she murmured. Wade looked over with curiosity. 

*** 

Wade watched from below, concentrating, then from above as Ember leapt from window to window to land onto the roof of The Fireplace. There was something about the way she moved that was ethereal , like some kind of graceful, fiery shooting star. Despite knowing magic himself, he had to say that she was the most magical thing he had ever seen.  

She flinched as she realized that Wade was directly in front of her, already on the roof. She glanced down to where he had been, and then back up at where he currently was with confusion. Wade gave her a casual shrug and smile. Knowing how to cast Misty Step for teleportation had its advantages. To his surprise, she quickly shook off the confusion in favor of determination and didn’t ask any questions, instead opting to duck behind a chimney and pull out a few pieces of scrap metal.  

What was she doing? Even up on the roof, they still couldn’t see much of the canals. He wished he was proficient enough in magic to cast Flight, but he was sort of stuck at second-string spells. Wade reminded himself to maybe ask about more magic training back at Headquarters. 

He had to admit that the view from here was pretty, though. Firetown was full of browns, reds, and oranges in the day, and at night, lanterns and braziers glimmered through the dark. Wade’s attention was quickly drawn back to Ember as she tugged a long piece of steel-like cloth from one of the corners of the roof. 

“You might want to step back,” she warned. Wade obliged, utterly confused about what she was about to do. Her fire flared brightly as she picked up a large dome-shaped piece of scrap, heating it until it glowed red, then orange, and finally a bright yellow as she flattened the center, leaving the sides upturned. Wade watched in surprise and awe as she picked up two long, flat sheets, bending them to fit onto the upturned sides of the flattened dome.  

A basket? Wade thought. But Ember wasn’t done. Here came four long, thin bars, heated yellow-hot, and she welded them to stick upwards from the sides of the basket. She grabbed one more bar, which she bent into a circle, placing it in the middle of the bars and bending their ends into hooks over the circle before melting it all together.  

Wow, Wade thought, a silly grin spreading across his face. Not only is she amazingly determined, but she’s a great metalworker too!   

He watched in wonder as she welded the hooks embedded in the tarp to the hooks on the basket, then leapt in. Still, he couldn’t help but question what such a contraption was for. This was quickly answered as Ember leapt into the basket, drawing the heat out from it, then flared her flames a bright gold, form rising. The heat she was giving off rose into the air and got caught by the tarp, pushing it into the air and causing it to balloon upwards.  

“By the Gray Waves!” Wade exclaimed, eyes wide and stepping back as the basket rose a little off the ground with Ember still in it. She had done something incredible! 

She’d made a flying vehicle! Powered by herself! 

Smart and spunky! And insanely resourceful! He thought. He’d never seen an invention like this, not even among the artificers in the Lunar Guard. “That. Is. AMAZING!” he gushed, looking up and around the balloon in awe.  

“Shh!” she whispered. “Get in!” 

Wade clambered in, rising to a standing position inside the basket, and continued to look on in amazement as Ember closed her eyes in concentration, her fire burning so bright that the flames flickered almost white. He’d never seen her do this before, and thought it was incredibly captivating the way her fire looked. The basket rose higher and higher, until they were high enough to see most of the canals. A piercing heat and bubbling noise from his side shook him from his awe as he realized that his arm closest to Ember was boiling. He scooted a little further away, but not without a little disappointment.  

A shine against the stone of a canal below them caught Wade’s eye. It was water, right next to where he had gotten into Ember’s hypocaust! “Okay, that’s where I got sucked in!” he said, pointing at the metal pipe in the canal. It looked like there was a small trail of water leading from it up one canal in particular. “More water, go that way.” Why did an air-hypocaust have a pipe in a canal, anyways? Maybe it was intended to use both air and water? He put aside the question for later. 

Even as he stood a little further away, Wade could still enjoy the warmth coming off of Ember. He had decided that he liked the way the heat felt on his form. Ember is incredible, he thought, admiring the way her fire shone, its lone glow like a singular star against the dark night sky. Not only was she amazing to see, but she was so driven in everything she did. Wade had never seen anyone so bent on fighting, fighting the way things happened to them. When he’d write reports (the ones he managed to submit, that is), people would be sad or complain a bit, but they’d let it go. Ember had chased him down on a longship fleet, through City Square, and even almost stopped him in his tracks right at Lunar Guard Headquarters! And now, here she was, inventing a flying vehicle just so she could find the source of a leak! Her temper might be short, but Wade figured that it was just because she was passionate about the things she loves! Her determination was deeply admirable, and it was just as beautiful as the way her fire flickered. 

Ember must have felt his eyes on her, because she glanced over at him. Wade didn’t want to seem weird, so he pretended to be looking at the view.  

The city was beautiful from here. Wade could see the towering stone spires of buildings nearer to the heart of the city. Windmills marked the Air sector of the city, large white cloth wings that spun gently in the wind standing out against the waterfalls and fountains common to the Water sector. The Earth sector was also easy to see, with its large, mossy structures overgrown with flowers. 

Wade didn’t think that the view would keep them occupied for the journey, though, so he decided to ask something. 

“So, uh, what do you do at the shop? If you don’t mind me asking.”  

“My dad’s retiring, and I’ll be taking over.” She sighed, leaning against the edge of the basket. “Someday. When I’m ready.” 

Wade smiled. “It must be nice knowing what you’re going to do.” He didn’t say it, but he hated floating from job to job, fired for mishap after mishap. Where was his passion? The thing he wanted to do with his life? His eyes lowered, remembering why exactly his passion refused to show its face. “After my dad passed, I got all ‘What’s the point?’ ” He gestured uselessly to the sky in front of them. “Now I just go from one job to the next.”  

Ember’s expression softened, her flames becoming gentler. “There’s a word in Firish,” she said. “ Tishók .” Of course, the sound was foreign to Wade, but it somehow sounded both harsh and soft at the same time. She continued. “It means ‘embrace the light while it burns, because it won’t always last forever.’ ” 

What a nice word. Sad, but nice. A reminder of how temporary things can be. “Tee-shook,” he said, trying to repeat Ember’s pronunciation but failing. The word felt a little strange on his tongue. Ember exhaled through her nose in something reminiscent of a laugh, a smile bright on her face. “Or something like that,” she added helpfully. 

As Ember’s eyes settled on something below, her expression fell, sorrow marring her face. Wade glanced over to see what she was looking at to find a large, ornately built domed building. 

“You okay?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” she replied, but her voice was small and sad.  

“You sure?” 

Ember inhaled sharply. “It’s just, that building over there.” she nodded toward the building she had been looking at. “That’s the Garden Central Mage’s Hall, where magic users would perform or show off stuff. When I was a kid, my dad took me there, all the way across the city because just a few months ago, the famed Life Wizard Arcturus had created something impossible: a tree with flowers that can thrive in any environment—fire included! A flower, immune to fire!  

And that day, they were showing one of those trees off in that building. It was called the Vivisteria.” Wade saw how her eyes filled with wonder as she said the word Vivisteria. Ember continued. “I wanted to see it so bad. When we got there, I was so excited.” Her voice wavered a bit, her eyes growing distant. “But they said our fire was too dangerous for the flower, and they wouldn’t let us in. The people there shouted things at us, things I was too little to understand why they were said. My dad was so angry and embarrassed.” 

A harshness overtook Ember’s face and voice. “The building flooded a few years later. So I missed my one chance to see a Vivisteria.” Her flames flared angrily, purple staining their edges.  

Wade had listened quietly, the story slowly driving a knife into his heart. Tears of empathy had involuntarily found their way into his eyes. How could people do that? Berate a little kid and her dad just because they looked a little different. Nobody should have such things happen to them. To be so small, and to be told to stay away because the way they were wasn’t right to others. His mind raced with such thoughts, and he struggled on what to say, looking into Ember’s eyes until he settled on something: 

“You must have been so scared,” Wade said, voice soft to hide how it cracked.  

Ember’s eyes widened in surprise, then returned to a look of sorrow. “I was.” 

They stared for a moment, into each others’ eyes. In that small, simple moment, Wade saw a few of the things Ember’s fire-colored gaze held. Intelligence. Determination. Tragedy.  

Perseverance. 

The moment was broken when Ember shook her head with a sigh, putting her face in her hands. “Ugh. How do you do that?” she said.  

“Do what?” Wade asked in confusion. 

“Draw people in!” Frustration tinged her voice, her fire stirring a little harsher. “You got a whole stadium to connect with you. I can’t even connect with one customer. My stupid temper always kicks in.” She folded her arms, resting her head on them against the side of the basket.  

Wade leaned on the basket right next to her. “I guess I just say what I feel.” 

Ember rolled her eyes and put her face into her arms. 

Wade continued. “And I don’t think a temper is so bad. “Sometimes, when I lose my temper, I think it’s just me trying to tell me something that I’m not ready to hear.” 

Ember exhaled sharply, skeptical. “That’s ridiculous.” 

That skeptical, sharp tone. It reminded Wade of how he would retort when his dad would suggest that Wade would play waveball or do waterworking or something that his dad enjoyed, but that Wade suspected he would never be as good as his dad at. Angry, but not. Defensive was the better word. But what was she defensive about? Clearly she didn’t want to talk about it, so Wade simply smiled and said “Maybe.”  

In due time, perhaps she’d be more open. 

Before he could ponder over it some more, a set of broken gates caught his eye. “Hey, there!” he cried, pointing. “Put us down there!”  

*** 

Ember carefully landed the vehicle just outside a broken floodgate at the end of a canal that had water splashed over parts of the inside. A large hole was punched in the floodgate, the wood parts splintered and the metal parts bulging outward. The floodgate looked old and outdated. “That’s not right,” Wade noted. 

He dipped his finger into a nearby puddle and tasted the water. “Fresh grass and mud. Yup, this is the source!”  

The two walked through the hole, and Wade paused to examine the damage with a hm . Ember looked at how the metal part of the hole was seemingly pushed outward by force, and how it was slightly off the ground. “Wade, look,” she said, pointing out what she found. “I think something else broke this.”  

He nodded thoughtfully. “This place is supposed to hold and slowly drain water for irrigation that spills over from the nearby Collata River when it floods, since it’s got a massive amount of water. But it shouldn’t be-” he cut himself off as the rush of water was heard nearby. The two stared in horror as a huge wall of water rose above the canal, a shadow looming at its top.  

“RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!” Wade screamed.  

The two made a mad dash for the floodgate, leaping through the hole. Ember managed to clamber onto a small ledge created by the hole, but Wade wasn’t so lucky and got caught in the current as the water crashed onto the other side of the floodgate. Ember was shielded from the water, but Wade screamed in terror, crying for help as he clung desperately to a chunk of wood still attached to the gate. “HELLLLP!”  

Ember looked around quickly, trying to think of how to help Wade. Her eyes landed on a long piece of metal sticking out from the gate, and she forced her heat into it, wrenching it off of the gate and extending it towards Wade. “Grab this!” He grunted in exertion, barely managing to grab the end. Ember hauled him out of the water, and he clung to the other side of the gate, breathing heavily while watching the water rush by. 

“Firetown!” Ember said in realization. All this water, it was going to end up there! It was putting people in danger! But before she could think of anything to do, a massive form burst through the hole, violently knocking both Ember and Wade into the air.  

For a moment, Ember was flying through the air, staring at the stars above in shock, before crashing into the ground and hearing Wade scream and splash onto the stone next to her. She landed with a grunt of pain on the edge of the canal, then looked to see what had attacked them. 

It was an absolutely hulking, bridle-less, bluish-black horse made entirely of water. River reeds and plants lined its form, woven among its mane and tail and draped across its body. It stomped the ground angrily, looking around for the two of them. Ember’s breath caught in her throat. 

“A kelpie,” Wade whispered from beside her. “That would explain the flooding, but they usually don’t come by this area.”  

“So getting rid of it would stop the flooding?” Ember said, a little too loud. Wade nodded. The creature’s neck snapped with an unsettling cracking sound to look at Ember, who stood like a deer in torchlight. Its eyes shone with malice. She chuckled nervously. “Woah ther-”  

It charged. 

Ember’s fear got the better of her and she yelped in fright for probably the first time in her life. She dove to the side as a whipping sound followed by a crack and a loud ploosh split the air.  

She opened her eyes to find that the kelpie had stopped in its tracks, a rock sunken into the water of its face. Ember turned to see Wade, his sling drawn and loaded with another rock. 

“Back off!” he yelled. He gave his sling another high-speed spin and launched another rock directly into the kelpie’s face. Ember’s mouth gaped in surprise. He’s putting himself in danger to help.

The kelpie charged him, slamming into his stomach and sending him flying. He let out a yelp, managing to slap a hand onto its back, and to Ember’s surprise, it stuck. He huffed, mumbled something and did a few short hand motions with his free hand, then slapped it onto the horse. 

Ice spread across its form from where he touched it, even partially freezing Wade’s hand. The kelpie, in response, leapt into the current, dunking both itself and Wade into the water. “IT’S SUCKING ME IN!” he yelled between dunks. A deeper horror overtook Ember’s fear as she realized that the kelpie was actually absorbing some of Wade’s water into its own form. 

I can’t just stand here. What can I do? Ember thought. Fighting directly with the kelpie would do no good, especially considering she couldn’t touch the water of its form. She could carve a sigil, but on what? I could make a projectile, she realized, eyes snapping to a few metal nails that lay discarded on the stone. She scooped them up as Wade let out a loud battle cry with a voice crack in the background, accompanied by the sound of a very angry horse. Time to return Wade’s favor.  

Ember slammed her hands together, forcing as much heat as she could into the nails she held. The metal became soft under the intense heat, and she shaped it into a sphere slightly smaller than her fist, then quickly drew two sigils she rarely used into opposite sides of the metal: 

First, harm/hurt. Second, spike, intense, severe. 

Harm severely.  

Ember quickly circled the two sigils with a dotted line, creating an effect that would be unleashed on a hard impact. She found she had to push more energy into this sigil-phrase than most of the ones that The Fireplace used day-to-day. She strained with the effort, Wade’s cries in the background spurring her forward, until the freshly made sigil-phrase finally glowed a dim but violent red-violet, ready to be activated.  

“Wade!” she cried, looking over to see the Water man, form noticeably smaller, being bucked to and fro by the kelpie and yelping the entire time. She saw he was still making an effort to freeze it, but by the looks of it, he had hardly made any progress, and now both of his hands were overtaken by frost. She looked down at the little sphere in her hand, realizing with a facepalm that she probably couldn’t throw it hard enough to achieve the desired effect. Wade would have to use his sling. “Can you catch?” she yelled. 

“Probably!” he yelled back, still hanging on.  

“I made you special sling ammo! You need to catch it gently and hit the kelpie with it!”  

Wade wrenched his arm free, his frozen hand coming off. He reformed a hand at the end of his arm to give a thumbs up just as the kelpie pulled him back beneath the current. 

Ember waited with bated breath for him to come back up. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Bubbles beneath the stream. Four seconds. Five seconds. Six seconds. Seven. Eight. Nine.  

A splash rose from the water as Wade arose from the current, somehow having managed to get to a standing position on the kelpie, one hand outstretched to catch. 

Dang. Wade might not be muscular, but he was strong . And a fighter.  

“Catch!” She threw the orb at Wade’s open hand, and it sank directly into his form, his water cushioning the impact so as to not activate the sigil. Ember pumped her fist for the small victory, but knew it wasn’t over yet. She needed to get the kelpie’s attention, so she picked up a hammer that had been next to the nails and hurled it directly at the water horse.  

The hammer thudded against its side, sinking into its watery form slightly. “Hey, you!” Ember shouted, waving her arms and flaring her fire. The kelpie bucked Wade off with an angry bray, gaze locking onto the shouty Fire woman in front of it on the wall of the canal. “Yeah, you! You dumb piece of kelp!” Ember continued. “You think you can come in here, and flood my town?” she jabbed a finger into her chest. It snorted angrily, scraping a hoof against the ground. Ember tossed every Firish expletive she could think of at it and threw a few pieces of scrap as it inched closer and closer. 

The horse made an angry noise from its throat, its dark stare glaring at her. 

Ember growled, staring right back as her fire crackled angrily. Where was Wade? Anytime, guy!  

She stared at it. 

It stared right back. 

Wade, please hurry it u-  

It charged with a vicious, demon-pitched scream, and Ember let out a retaliating war cry as it ran toward her at top speed, leaping through the air to get on top of the wall where she was, and she flinched back, ready to collide with a furious horse made of water- 

Thonk.  

Ember hadn’t even noticed she had closed her eyes, and opened them as droplets of water splashed against her form. She hissed in pain, looking up to see a gaping hole punched directly through the kelpie’s head. The wound sizzled. The kelpie looked up at it before its form collapsed, dissolving into inert water, river plants, and a strange jelly-like substance. As it vanished, the water stopped flowing from the gate. Wade stood behind where it had been, sling drawn and breathing hard.  

The two stood, staring at each other, bending down and trying to catch their breath.  

Ember was the first to move, straightening. “Whew. You said that would stop the flooding?”  

Wade reabsorbed lost water from the last trickles of the river water from behind the gate, his form returning to a normal size. “Yup. Probably. I gotta get a city crew to fix the gate and put up a ward here before Friday.”  

So for now, the problem was fixed. It felt as though an enormous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The shop was safe! She had finally done something right!  

Wade turned to her, picking up the sphere with the expended sigil-phrase. “How did you do that?” he asked, looking at her with a bit of wonder. Ember disregarded the question in favor of staring at a glob of sand floating around in the water of his face.  

“What?” he asked.  

“You’ve got a little-” she cut herself off with a chuckle. “Sand.” 

“Oh!” he reached for the cheek opposite the glob. “Here?” then patted the cheek with the sand inside. “Or here?” 

“It’s right there,” Ember said, reaching out to grab it out of his cheek. She stopped halfway, almost having forgotten they couldn’t touch. “Um.”  

He glanced at where she had been reaching. “Oh.” he pulled out the glob. “Thanks.” he grinned. 

Wade had a nice smile. 

It was weird, now that she thought about it. Now, standing here, he seemed rather ordinary. Nobody would have thought that just a moment ago, he was standing on top of a monster and then punching a hole directly through its forehead with his sling. It stirred up something strange in Ember. Something unexplainable. She felt… Important? Vulnerable? Impressed? Maybe all three?  

Um. She probably shouldn’t dwell on it. “Well, let me know when it’s done, I guess.”  

He still had that nice smile on his face. “I’ll make sure there’s a crew here by Friday.” 

“Okay, see ya.” She began to walk semi-stiffly away. What a night it had been. Maybe she wou- 

“Wait!” Wade called. She turned to him, attentive. Was there more to do to fix the flooding? “Any chance you’re free tomorrow?” he asked. Huh? “To hang out with a… Water guy?” he continued, tone growing nervous. 

Ember raised an eyebrow. “With a Water guy? My dad would boil you alive.”  

“He doesn’t have to know!” Wade said, excitement entering his voice. “We can meet in the city! I promise, nothing weird.” He held out his hands in a display of innocence. 

Ember chuckled at his enthusiasm. “Sorry, that’s not going to happen.” But she couldn’t help but beam, partially to her own confusion. Why am I smiling?  

“You smiled! I saw it!” Wade said, grinning ear to ear. “Tomorrow! I’ll be at the Alkali Theater. Three hours past noon!”  

Ember, for some reason she didn’t know, didn’t stop herself from mentally taking note of the time.