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It was inside his skin, flowed through his veins, burned with every heartbeat. His body heat had always been high, reaching a fever in the summer. He had to learn to ignore his discomfort, to tolerate it, so that Nya could survive. Winter early mornings gave him a break, allowed him to sleep for more than a few hours without waking up.
He remembered hearing as a child about mountains covered in snow, covered in cold. From that day on, he couldn’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to be comfortable for more than one night, to stop feeling a fire burning inside him.
But his fantasies took up time, and when he learned that time was money, he abandoned every drop of imagination about feeling the snow. He buried the desire like he buried the idea of seeing his parents again. And it was curious, sometimes he secretly thought, as if doing so would kill him, he thought that by climbing a mountain he would find his parents. As if they knew that they should be there for him.
When he grew and his height surpassed Nya’s, he discovered how stupid it was to dream about it. He scolded himself thousands of times at night when the spasms wouldn’t let him sleep, when dehydration overcame him. Drinking water was missing in his house, it always had been. Days before his parents disappeared, the water stopped being potable, a problem that lasted for years.
Water was always cheap but never his biggest worry, it was okay for Nya to drink more than him. What use was it to someone who was always dehydrated? He always thought that if he drank it, it would be the same as spilling it in a desert.
Although he always tried to save as much money as possible for Nya, he couldn’t avoid buying cigarettes. There were days when the money ran out before he could, so he resorted to stealing them. He perfectly remembered the time an old man burned his cigarette on his back, marking him as a thief, or at least that’s what the delirious old man thought. His skin became paler, he also sunk by a couple of millimeters.
One drag and the discomfort, the heat, the hunger went away. One drag and it gave him a pleasure he couldn’t feel with anything else. At some point, when his teenage mind still hadn’t processed it, he thought of cigarettes as his only support.
The float he needed when his eyelids asked for rest but his mind screamed that if he stopped working he wouldn’t be able to continue.
He lost that addiction when Nya discovered him, crying rivers she begged him to quit. And he couldn’t deny his sister anything, he stopped smoking. The following months were difficult, he was more irritable than usual. He lost his small moment of pleasure and to this day sometimes he craves a cigarette.
He never hated that his temperature was higher, it suited him on cold days, he could lend all his clothes to Nya.
It was true that on nights when he couldn’t sleep, he would tear off his skin as if that would stop the heat, he thought his blood would stop pumping fire, tearing until blood appeared.
It never worked but even now sometimes he does it, now it’s simply a simple nervous habit.
He never forgot the first time he learned to cook, his first dish was disgusting. However, it was food and he couldn’t afford to throw it away. He smiles every time he remembers how he forced Nya to finish it.
From his failure, he knew he couldn’t continue like that, he had to learn fast. He remembered knocking on the door of the calmest woman in all the town, begging her to teach him how to cook. Telling her lies about why his parents couldn’t teach him.
Every time he knocked on the door, he was received with a smile, and with each visit he remembered what it was like to feel like a child. He didn’t think about it much back then, but it was a greater pleasure than a cigarette and selfish as it may sound, a greater pleasure than seeing his sister smile.
He didn’t remember the woman’s name, but he never forgot her smile when she saw him, the most honest he had ever received from an adult. And he felt youthful being able to laugh without any weight, knowing someone was happy for his existence.
He knew Nya loved him, he never questioned that. However, he also knew that Nya needed him. Somehow he knew his existence was based on Nya’s survival and without her he would have given up years ago.
He couldn’t erase from his memory the night that woman died. A thief had entered their house, she had protested and received a blow that made her bleed to death. He discovered how fast someone could die, how quickly you stop remembering people’s voices.
Even now he missed the taste of the first soup she taught him to make, maybe it tasted better because she made it for him and only for him.
He cried for several nights after her death, feeling like he was drowning with every tear he shed. Nya comforted him, told him everything would be alright, and it was then that he knew he had to mature and press down any desire to be treated like a child again.
He burned her house down shortly after her death, repeating a thousand times that he did it so the town wouldn’t sell it. But he knew, if he dug a little, that he did it to burn his memories. To give himself stability, to stop knocking on the door even knowing there was no one on the other side.
When he started working in the forge, it was hell. He couldn’t avoid stopping work every five minutes, he ran outside the smithy to the fresh air. He learned the hard way to stop doing it, he had gotten sick and when Nya helped him it was useless.
Lying in bed with nothing to do, he spent most of the time alone. Nya had to go to school and no matter how many times Nya told him she could skip one or two days, he always said no. Her education was important, she knew how to read, she knew math and if it weren’t for the fact that he himself had dropped out of school, he would have been jealous of her.
The first time he used his elemental power his hands stopped feeling, he had a second-degree burn. His fingers bled and even then he couldn’t feel it. He still remembered the panic of his fingers burning, there were still days when he felt like he would burn in a blink.
His fingerprints burned away along with his identity, he missed leaving his thumbprint on windows. He knew it was insignificant, that he shouldn’t have complained, but sometimes he wished to know he wasn’t just fire.
His power was destructive, it burned everything to ashes.