We were not the same; where I was elemental, she was in touch with the elements, but still she was something more. The next step in human evolution, I taught her to use her connection to the elements to manipulate her world. She could create fire with a touch, shield herself from harm with the air, call to water so that she never remained thirsty, even create shelter out of the barest environment for herself and her family. Finally, I was able to teach her to change her shape, until she swam with me as a porpoise.
The part of me that was still Jane True nearly shat itself at these revelations. Are we all really just humans? I thought. Could all the Alfar mythologies about being a different species be lies?
I also realized something else. Oh my gods, that’s Blondie! I thought, watching the young human woman change herself into a porpoise, and back. Is she that old?
Others were born like that first elemental girl, the one Jane True knew as Blondie. It wasn’t a common mutation, but it happened often enough that I was able to manipulate them to help them find each other. Some, however, lived so far away that I had to teach them myself. I’d learned to guide their powers and their training in their dreams, so they never learned of my existence. But I still loved them, as a parent loves a child, which is why the first one to be murdered hurt so much.
He was only a boy. The first time he called forth fire to warm his freezing family, his father called him evil and slit his throat.
The killings were more common after that. Some of my children were able to create places for themselves in their clans as shamans, or even as demigods, but most were abused, cast out, or killed. I guided the survivors and the exiles together, creating safe havens where they could live together in peace.
I blamed fire for the other humans’ inability to understand my children. But I’d forgotten that fire lived in their veins, as well.
I’d also forgotten that while I was one of the last of the ancient elements left on earth, I wasn’t the last.
It started out as a whisper in the dreams of my most powerful children. In their waking life, they were shielded from me. But sleeping, they were more open. And while I never searched their minds, such sleeping whispers would sometimes intrude upon me.
Their dreams revealed some who wanted more power. More important, they wanted power in order to seek revenge upon those who had cast them out, or hurt them, or killed others like them.
These ones banded together, practicing their magics not to make their lives better and easier, but so they could use their power as a weapon.
Soon enough, this attracted the attention of one of Fire’s only surviving children. He was young—hardly older than humanity—and Fire had made him deliberately weak in an attempt to create something that could survive itself.
On his own, Fire’s progeny could do little. He was just a whisper of flame—but just as a single match could start a blaze that burned down half a continent given the right conditions, he knew he’d found the perfect kindling in my children.
He whispered to them of an artifact: a child of earth who had laid down to rest in its parent’s bosom, and had died there. Reabsorbed, its corpse had added to the power that now fed my little elementals. But it had left part of itself behind.
“… a single horn, like that of a bull,” Fire’s child whispered. “With which you can magnify your power beyond your imagination. You can become as gods…”
Some of my children left in the night, guided by the flame that led them, like a will-o-the-wisp, to their doom.
The horn was found and brought back. Its magic was unleashed…
Suddenly the memory I was living slowed, until I was in the moment again, watching everything unfold from the creature’s viewpoint behind one of its children’s eyes.
I watched as a young woman stepped forward, holding aloft a bull’s horn the length of her forearm. Her tattooed forearms…
Blondie, I realized, my heart thudding in my chest. She was there, at the beginning, and here, as well?
My friend was obviously making a speech, gesticulating vehemently with both her free hand and the horn. Around me, some of the other people’s faces reflected agreement, others concern, others confusion, and a few anger.