The Third Fire - 1. The Third Fire

My name is Azrael and today is the last day of my innocence.

The morning passed as mornings do, with waking and preparing for the day. I wore the clothes I always wore for these were the only clothes I had. The trews were heavyweight, coarse-woven and brown. The knees were patched, the left with a piece of black wool and the right with a striped remnant from my mother's collection of quilt-making scraps. My shirt was at one time white, but now bore the colors of my life, a dull gray sheen over stains that even mother could not scrub out. Like most boys my own age, I went barefoot. Father claimed he could not afford the leather it would take to keep my ever-growing feet properly shod. I headed outside with my siblings to scrub my face and hands clean before I sat down at the rough wooden table. Mother passed me a cord to pull my hair back out of my face as she chided me over allowing it to grow so long and threatened it with her kitchen knife before she served porridge in the hand-carved wooden bowls with matching spoons my father had presented her upon their wedding. We children made quick to-do of the simple but filling food.

After breakfast, I had my chores to do. Simple enough they were filling my time until it was too hot to work. When the sun was at its highest I usually did what most people tended to do and headed back indoors to escape from the burning rays however today I thought a cool dip in the river would work equally as well.

The water was cooling. The shade along the bank was inviting and being a growing boy, I heeded its call and lay down. My clothing made a fair enough pillow for my head and I dozed. It was sometime between the closing of my eyes and the opening of them that I saw them again, figments of my imagination, harbingers of things to come. They stood each in a ring of fire and beckoned me. In my dream, I stood to obey, but before I could decide which to direction to follow, one of my siblings found me on the riverbank and woke me. It seemed that father needed my help. The high lord was hosting a party tonight they needed extra servants. I was to come.

Donning my clothing quickly with no modesty or shame at my assimilation from boy to man I hurried to heed my father's summons. In the years past my elder brothers would have attended father when he needed help meeting the high lord's 'requests' however with my eldest brothers firmly wed and beginning families of their own and my next elder brother apprenticing several towns over to a blacksmith, the responsibility of aiding my father falls firmly on my shoulders.

I have often wondered how a person knows when his days of childhood are over as for most, it seems to be a gradual process, at least that is the way it was for my brothers. It was as if they went to bed one night children, and woke up the next morning wed with a child or two of their own. For me, the realization came with the dream I had which had repeated today while I napped. It was not the dreamings of childhood, but of something more. Something that I neither feared nor celebrated, only knew it was inevitable that it would come to pass and I knew that when I chose my innocence would be lost.

Fresh scrubbed, I walked shoulder to shoulder with my father through the forest path that led to the high lord's home. Man-high he called me although my voice still squeaked. One day, he told me, I would grow into my feet and hands and when I did, I would be a man. Little did he know I would be a man before the next dawn.

My duties at the High Lord's home were simple. I was to do aid the stable master with the visitor's mounts. Stuffed into livery a mite bit small, I stood at attention with the other boys as the guests began to arrive, a double column of men in livery of blue and green. Paladins of the goddess I was told by a man not much older than myself, a holy warrior barely able to contain the mirth in his voice.

I did as the other boys and led my beast away, but in doing so I missed speaking to the troupe of women and men who arrived in carriages, dressed in shades of red with floral designs on their garments.

When my charge was groomed and fed, I reported again to the stable master who sent me to scrub the horse scent off my skin and to report to the kitchens where I was handed a tray of sweetmeats and sent into the parlor where the paladins and other guests gathered. I was to find out later those dressed in red were members of the Order of the Rose and served the god in a singular capacity.

The High Lord was in good spirits as he mingled with his guests, his son, a boy a little older than myself at his side. There were rumors circulating among the non-religious guests that the High Lord's son would have his choice from among the Order of the Rose to share his bedding. I thought nothing as I smiled at the guests and brought them more food and wine to consume.

Then I saw them.

The man and the woman from my dreams were guests of the High Lord. She wore red and he green. I felt my face grow warm as I approached first one then the other to offer them my wares. Each accepted, each spoke soft words, and each made my stomach tie in knots.

I was ever grateful when the time came for me to return to the stables to wait for my father so we could head home. Ever grateful that is until I saw him standing against the stables in his uniform, the paladin from my dream. He smiled at me and I smiled back. He reached out his hand and I placed mine in his. He whispered words that made little sense, words of love and loyalty, and serving her. I felt warm and found myself nodding as he lead me along the pathway into the trees. A paladin is called, he said as he lowered me to the ground, his breath hot on my cheek. Called, he whispered as I found myself shivering in the chill of the night, my skin released from the too small livery and pressed against the moss covered ground. He pressed his body against mine and asked me if I felt her call.

I felt him pressing me into the earth, yet instead of the earth being hard against my back I felt cradled, caressed, and loved. I wept from the joy of it, rolling over to be embraced more fully. My paladin lay again on top of me and wept with me as I clawed at the earth crying out my passion. It was then I felt it, the connection that we are told we all have with the land. I felt the grasses and trees, the sleeping flowers and the burrowing animals deep within her. Then I felt my seed wet against her and my paladin's seed deep with in me. I breathed in deeply the musky scents of the forest and of man and wept again for my innocence lost.

My paladin held me pinned between him and the earth and the sky and I dreamed again. She was there, as was he, and we were all ringed in fire. The third fire being around me as I accepted the calling of the goddess in my life and became a man in her embrace.

There was no need to explain to my father. He looked at me and saw her passion burning in my eyes. He smiled and told me to go and be happy. He would explain to my mother that she whelped another man and she should be proud.

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