The Precipice

The rain came heavy this morning.

His nerves, at times, seemed numb to their own command of it. He could not feel his call to the sky, the stir that gathered clouds and the weight that invariably released at the first drop of precipitation sent plummeting to the earth. He felt no release of weight today.

It was dark yet, the dense black of low-rumbling storm clouds smothering the first delicate glow of dawn ahead of him. Water and wind hissed together in sporadic bursts across the sheer cliff face dropping at his feet, spattering across him and ruffling the thick layers of his kimono until breaking apart on his painted armor. 

Heavy-lidded eyes stared into the valley below, where a large village dispersed among silver-licked canopies of swaying trees. Rooftops slick with runoff. Dirt roads as narrow as veins from his vantage, softened by mud. Shadows sheltering roosters waiting for the storm to pass before their first crow. 

__________

“No.”

Kiran balked. “No? I haven’t even begun the proposal!” The smile crept across his lips already, though the rest of his face remained dedicated to the illusion of affront. 

“But, by the gods of old, does the look on your face say it all.” Ozai sat, narrow and straight-backed, at the long-since empty council table, still poring over proposals Kiran had decided on within minutes of first hearing them. His fire burned in the bronze chandelier overhead in fourteen perfect flames, warming the dark lacquer of the long-table and gentling the starkness of his pale hair.

Kiran laughed openly, abandoning his pretense of tension already. “My face also proclaims my unwavering devotion to you. Do you say no to that as well?”

Ozai paused, lashes lifting slowly to look at him across the table. His expression remained flat, save for the upward twitch of one eyebrow. “Are you being sweet with me?”

Kiran’s grin flashed wider as he knocked the chair whose back he had been clutching aside, thumping heavily over the table on his elbows. He leaned halfway across to Ozai, as intentional with his eye contact as he was his avoidance of the question. “Come with me.”

A warm rush of humor sparkled in Ozai’s eyes. He dropped them immediately to the documents before him, the faint tension of a repressed smile set at the corners of his lips.

Kiran stretched a little further across the table. “Ozai,” he goaded. 

“My answer remains unchanged.” 

“It’s a charming village that has learned novel uses for the burgeoning alchemical arts!”

“I have no doubt.” He pushed aside one parchment for another.

“It deserves proper recognition!”

“You provide it quite adequately on my behalf.”

“I tire of traveling alone.”

“You have Haoran.”

“He drives me insane.”

At last, a chuckle. “I imagine the truth goes the other way around.”

Kiran imagined the same and began to laugh. The sound settled prematurely when he noticed that Ozai’s posture had shrunken by fractions. The press of his fingertips against the documents had turned the tips of his nailbeds white. His flames above did not swell or flicker, but their dance had lost its fluidity.

The playfulness of his posture vanished, stare sombering. “Ozai.” His tone softened.

Ozai’s throat tightened. His head snapped up only to turn away. “You know why I do not follow you, so I don’t know why you continue to ask.”

His terseness did not cause Kiran to flinch away. He only straightened partway, an ache pressing into his chest. “Because they are ready now. The people adore me. I adore you. They trust that.” 

Ozai drew one metered breath and held it, still staring aside at the far wall. “No,” he said. “Gods of fire provoke only fear. When the people pray to me, it is either a demand for vengeance or a plea to pass them by. I answer them by ignoring their demands and respecting their pleas.”

The table was too wide for Kiran to reach out and touch him, though dearly he wanted to. He frowned, dropping his eyes to the table. His reflection came back to him in golden waves of firelight, black hair falling over his shoulders in thick sheets. He studied them for a long moment.

“Then show them what else they can pray for,” he said, once the pressure in his throat had eased. Ozai began to turn back to him, then stopped. “Come with me. We will line the streets with lamps, and you will light them. You will fill the hearth of every cold home with your warmth. You will light the fire with which we shall prepare for them a feast.”

Kiran reached out despite the distance, fingers falling over the corner of a parchment and pushing it aside as though that would close the distance. “Come. Show them.” He turned his palm over on the table and opened it.

Ozai turned, then turned a little more. He looked across to Kiran’s hand first, reticent. Kiran watched, waiting for the moment––

Ozai looked up.

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The village wasn’t charming anymore. Kiran’s eyes tightened, staring down over it still.

His sleeves dripped with water, impossibly heavy. His hair, freshly slicked back into a bun, pulled painfully at the crown of his skull.

Behind him, the camp, as vast as the village below, began to stir. Imperial purple tent flaps whipped as hands wrestled them open against the wind. Boots began to stomp the sodden earth. Blades clattered quietly as they were inspected and prepared. 

Kiran did not look back. A gust came nearly strong enough to push him back a step, surging up the cliffside and crashing across him with a burst of thunder. Tension curdled to nausea in his stomach. He peered over the ledge. The rain would not stop.

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They arrived just before dawn, as Kiran had planned. Over a thousand lampposts had been commissioned and installed along every street, filled with oil and left untouched for the arrival. “You will be their sunrise today,” he had told Ozai, after jumping off his destrier and joining Ozai inside his norimono during their final stretch to the village. 

He coaxed Ozai out onto horseback just before crossing onto the main street, surrounded by imperial regalia and the rich announcement cries of horns. Ozai lifted his hand and lit the first lamp before anyone answered the call of brass. His fingers were stiff, but his hand remained steady. He did not look at Kiran, but Kiran smiled anyway.

Villagers were always awake before dawn. Shutters flew open within moments. The busywork of shopkeeps preparing their goods for the day halted. Animals were abandoned in small pens or locked back inside their sheds as those tending them turned to the sound of their arrival.

Kiran heard his name rise through the streets like the babble of a rushing stream and could not help but grin wider. Home was not in a palace. It was with the people, and today he would show it to Ozai.

They flocked to the edges of the street, cries and praises lurching and then dying as they saw the man riding beside him. Excitement turned to gasps, to stumbling steps backward, to children hiding behind the legs of parents or the cover of crates. Shutters slammed closed. Phrases of adoration broke into fearful murmurs and the occasional plea for mercy.

Ozai’s open hand hesitated on its beckoning of the next flame as his attention fixated on the halting crowd. The regal composure of his countenance did not change, but Kiran saw the doubt flash in his eyes, the self-accusations. He did not abandon Ozai’s side.

“My dear subjects!” he called out, putting pause to several retreating footsteps in the crowd. He raised a warm, open hand and continued riding forward with Ozai. “As promised, I have brought to you the living dawn. Ozai, god of fire and flame! May he bless your streets with light that will not perish, your homes with warmth that will never wane, and your bellies with a feast you will not forget! Accept his blessings and welcome him on this glorious day!”

The murmurs hushed to hear him, rose a moment later, then snagged on themselves. Wide eyes watched, flitting between himself and Ozai among their entourage. Slowly, one man broke free from the crowd, then another and another. Women swept their children away. One child ran closer only to grab his goat by the rope at its neck and pull it away. 

The urge to call out to them nearly pulled Kiran off his horse, but he composed himself, instead turning to Ozai. His chest was still. “They’ll come around,” Kiran murmured. “Show them.” 

The stillness of Ozai’s chest persisted, then broke with an inhale. He did not glance at Kiran as he adjusted his single-handed grip on the reins, but he had heard. He raised his hand higher. The remaining crowd gasped and cowered. The lamp beside him lit, orange and radiant. 

He did not speak. He never made grand public speeches. He only kept riding, reaching toward each lantern and lighting it as he neared. 

Fewer and fewer people turned and fled. One shutter door, then another, peeked open by increments as they passed. Halfway down the mile-long street, a young girl offered a lantern up in her hands. Ozai turned his head and slowed his horse. His fingers did tremble faintly now as he hesitated, then reached. The wick crackled to life in a gentle swell of light, and the girl’s eyes widened. Then she laughed, delighted and true. Ozai’s hand froze where he had extended it, and, only seeing the back of his head, Kiran knew he stared in disbelief. 

Later, Kiran found the bravest and most devoted villagers and asked to be invited into their homes. He blessed them with gifts for their service and Ozai lit their hearths. He spoke to the occupants in the privacy behind walls, stated his benevolent intentions, remarked with approval upon the village. Some reached to touch his hand and gasped when he offered it and they found it did not burn, but was simply warm. 

The feast fed hundreds by dusk. Drink loosened the villagers. With their streets awash with light, their homes warmed by fires, and their appetites sated, they celebrated Ozai openly. His name filled the streets alongside Kiran’s. Offerings were extended to him and demonstrations performed of their alchemical feats––medicine, enchanted tools, flashy tricks. Ozai absorbed it all with an ever-softening expression, the warmth of his flame finally reaching his eyes and melting away all apprehension.

After night stretched deep, Kiran found him dancing to music with a village woman and laughed, promptly sweeping up a drunken Haoran into a ridiculous dance of their own. Later, Ozai had entertained and awed with mythology retold in the morphing shapes of his flame. Kiran watched how Ozai’s firelight set the faces around him aglow and knew with absolute, grateful certainty that truth had reached this place.

The god of fire here was not one of wrath and destruction. Here was Ozai, beloved flame of life.

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No fires lit the streets below now. Rusted, dinged skeletons of once gleaming posts were all that remained, dead lamps choked with spiderwebs and debris. Windows did not glow with steady hearth-fire. They sat anonymous in walls whose blackness swallowed them whole. The sound of his and Ozai’s names did not fill the silence of the storm-blown streets. 

Kiran closed his eyes, rainwater dripping off his lashes.

The flash of his falx blades turned the darkness behind his eyelids blinding white. It washed away in shades of red, each too deep to wipe away. At his feet, he still saw Ozai lying in the mud, chest open wide as the fire left his eyes.

The people below practiced the dark art that had guided Kiran’s blades that day. No one could hide behind the innocence of medicine, enchantment, and amusing tricks anymore.

Footsteps sucked up mud as they approached from behind. “Your Highness.”

Haoran. 

Kiran opened his eyes and saw a thin halo of light spread across the grass around him. 

“Dawn approaches. We await your orders. Do we advance or spare them?” There was strain in Haoran’s voice. Dread. He feared Kiran’s decision.

Hm.

Kiran disregarded the observation, casting a final, lingering stare over the edge of the cliff to the village before turning to his retainer, once called friend. He met him with a dead-eyed stare, then turned that gaze to the lantern clutched in Haoran’s hand. He snuffed the pale, mortal flame in the pinch of two fingers.

…..

At the bottom of the cliff, Kiran faced the horizon. Day had broken enough to lighten the storm to deep shades of violet and patches of pale gray. Behind him, his soldiers scoured the ruins of wind-collapsed homes, stabbing through the hearts of anyone found attempting to crawl from the rubble. All alchemical paraphernalia and related literature fed a great fire in the center of the village, sparked by a bolt of lightning. Blood dripped from the two swords dangling at the end of Kiran’s grip. 

Once, this village had learned to fear, and then to love the god of fire, and once they had learned to love the beloved god of storms. Now, they had learned whom their true fear should have been: Kiran, no longer the benevolent storm, but the tempest of wrath.