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Fire spirit cookie. The living incarnation of flame and a guardian of nature. Or so he was called.
The great wind could not remember how long it had been since the day he disappeared to tree knows where. Rumours and myths had circulated around the land of crispia, and yet all of them felt so far off from the truth. Now the elemental himself was only remembered by mortals down to the stories and legends passed down through inscriptions scrawled down on paper scrolls, carved into stone, and tales from the tribes of the dragons valley. from the few who still believed in him anyway.
From what zephyr did remember, the flame had no intention of returning the same as he was back then. Did he even intend to return at all?
The last conversation he had with him was millennia ago. If he could even call it a conversation. The so called “humanity” of the world was crumbling according to the other man. The guardian of fire didn’t understand what was left to protect when all began to succumb to corruption. He himself wasn’t a selfless man, yet he had grown enough as a person over a couple thousand years to know when things had gone too far.
It had reached a point where he didn’t see a way any of it could be fixed without going to extremes that the great wind could never even dream of. Extremes that the very thought of made his stomach churn and his palms sweaty. The last exchange between the two ‘colleagues’ ended in nothing but suffocating silence between them, suffocating silence that a part of zephyr wishes he could go back in time and pierce through with his arrows.
It was now as zephyr sat beneath one of the many oaks in the paradise he called his home, he reflected on the past conversation, the breeze whirling around him humid with the currents of the spring.
And yet even since his disappearance- it wasn’t as if he didn’t have a grain of truth to his words. Things hadn’t calmed down outside of paradise, if anything they only apparently had gotten worse. The last he had heard from his fellow guardians regarding the lives of the mortals around them, especially the ones more accustomed with their lives than he was, society itself was falling further and further into disarray. Corruption and pollution were both rampant, many suffered while others used it to their twisted advantages…
In conclusion from what zephyr had been told, he couldn’t help but find it all sickening.
But it wasn’t as if it couldn’t be changed though. The great wind knew that somehow an era of great change would come, whether he himself would be the one to bring it about or not.
He knew that whatever was happening, whatever was plaguing the world they live in, things would not remain the way they were. Everything would change soon and he was sure of it. He would still carry on with his duties, no matter how the world around him took its course. No matter who opposed him or what trials he may face, the guardian would fight against it until he drew his final breath.
—- —————-˚ ༄ ° ➷ —-—————-
It was very rare for the guardian to be able to rest, to attempt to collect his thoughts and take a moment for himself. The forest, while ever bristling with life, had been relatively silent today. No fallen spirits for him to purify, no dark forces looming through the outskirts. It had been like this for a short while. Maybe this was a sign that things were beginning to change. Just maybe.
Zephyr closed his eyes for a brief moment. The world around him seeming to still to a halt. He took in the air around him, feeling as the very wind that he himself was connected to caressed his feathers. It was gentle and cool with an air of warmth to it, exactly how he liked it.
A small red bird flew down from the canopy of the tree he had come to rest upon and perched next to him, it ruffled its feathers as the breeze, while still light, began to pick up slightly. The green scents of the springtime were now joined by something else. Faint, yet still there if you were able to notice it, to which the zephyr did. He always did.
Small animals of the forest seeking him out for warmth or company was an occurrence the wind guardian was too often familiar with. the critters of the forest had always been drawn to their guardian, it was as if something about him put them all to ease. the great wind, acknowledging the presence of the smaller life-form, gently lifted his wings as to let the little bird move ever closer, shielding it from the sun as if it was something sacred. All life was sacred to the guardian of nature, no matter how small it may be.
As much as the tranquility of it all somewhat aided with putting his racing mind to rest, Zephyr couldn’t help but feel… strange? He couldn’t tell why. Maybe it was the pollen. Maybe it was something else, but what would he know?
He felt suffocated. That’s what he felt, yet he also couldn’t help but to have a strange sense of calmness as he felt his lungs being overtaken by something foreign. Was it his vision or the air itself going cloudy?
The faint smell of smoke in the air that was now growing stronger, enveloping itself around him was oddly familiar. it only served to bring his thoughts back to where they previously were. Back to the cookie who left his life quicker than he was accepted into it and left an impression on the heart of the great wind himself, one that would never fully seem to shift.
The more the wind thought about it, the hazier his surroundings became. He could not sense the little red bird anymore, he was struggling to sense anything in all honesty. The chirping of birdsong around him and the soothing rustle of trees and grass soon began to fade into the back of his mind, like his thoughts were drowning them out…
his thoughts that at this very moment he struggled to keep. His thoughts that slowly drifted into nothingness as his eyelids grew heavier and his dough became stiffer. He couldn’t even think of how much he would have felt the need to move right now, to draw back his bowstring, to do something.
He couldn’t even stay conscious long enough to notice a figure appear in-front of him, considering how this very figure was the same guardian of fire that he reminisced about in what he didn’t know to be his final moments.
—- —————-˚ ༄ ° ➷ —- —————-
… as tragic as it was to the newly awoken immortal cataclysm to see the very one he had grown so close to all those years ago crumbled by his own hands- it wasn’t as if the other was needed anymore anyways. Besides, at least he wouldn’t feel the pain of being engulfed by searing flames and being burnt alive, would he?
At least he caught him off guard in a way where he knew the guardian of nature wouldn’t attempt to intervene. Cataclysm would admit that as much as the other attempted to get across to him where he was coming from all those years ago, he knew the only way to truly move forward would be to start from the beginning. To him it was nothing more than the harsh truth, an ideology that would need be to accepted, even if it meant the death of an elemental, an old …friend of his.
One of few he would have to kill, yet none with the same mercy he showed to zephyr.
as long as cataclysm got his way and completed his goal, the paradise that zephyr cared so much to put his life on the line for would be no more. There would be no more warm floral breezes and no more new life in the spring. There would be nothing more for the zephyr to protect, not that his millennia of efforts had been for anything anyways when it would all come to this in the end.
At least he wasn’t here to see it happen. To watch chaos incarnate unfold at the palms of someone he held so close to him, by the same man who haunted him at the back of his mind for millennia no matter how far back he attempted to push his memory away.
Maybe a part of zephyr understood deep down that the fire spirit he knew would never return to him. Not in this lifetime anyway.
… maybe in the future, when all of this ends, immortal cataclysm would find himself lucky enough to disappear and join zephyr of life wherever immortals go after they die.
…
maybe that would even be better.