De Facto Times

In their tiny vessel, what was left of humanity landed upon a foreign planet, and the air was so cold that the ground was frozen into near-stone and no seeds could be planted. The women and men and children climbed from the vessel, shaken from their awful journey, and as soon as the frigid air touched their hopeful faces, they wept and fell to their knees in despair. They had food rations, of course, but those would last a year at most. In the unyielding ground they had no way of growing more. After all they had endured, it seemed that the fate of humanity was sealed nonetheless.

There was something strangely beautiful in what followed in the next hour – roughly fifty thousand humans disembarked into the icy world that was to be the final grave of man, and they sat cross-legged on the hard ground with their friends and family, content to let the cold gently take their lives from them. It was peaceful and silent, for there was not even any wind to blow. The air dried their tears, and they felt warm in spite of the world they sat upon, such was the love that they shared collectively.

But there was one who refused to sit. Her name was Astralla, and she was ten years old, and she was frightened of death. Her parents and her sisters and brothers waved for her to join them in their motionless acceptance of death, but she would not. She had sat so long on that terrible spaceship, fleeing the ruined Earth with everyone else, and had been so hopeful that her new home would be a beautiful place where she could live at least ten more years. So she ran from death, into the snowy hills in the distance, desperate to find a means of life. Her family ran tearfully after all, determined that she would not die alone and lost.

And so Astralla led her family deep into the snowy hills, hoping that there would be someone, anyone, who would be able to help her. And by sheer luck, there was.

For as the young girl scanned the hills furiously, looking for any signs of softness in the soil, where crops could be planted, or perhaps liquid water, her eyes fell upon a tiny trail of smoke climbing stealthily towards the heavens. Her jaw dropped. Fire? In a world of ice such as this?

Indeed, there was a small campfire in one of the valleys, and sitting beside it was a man, so thoroughly wrapped in dark clothing that none of his skin could be seen. His hood cast a deep shadow across his face, but his eyes just barely reflected the firelight, so two faint specks blinked out from the darkness at Astralla. She saw him and was very afraid.

The fire man saw that she was cold and close to death, so he raised his arm, an arm completely hidden beneath a baggy black sleeve, and he gave her a wave, as if inviting her to join him. But as cold and needy as she was, Astralla’s fear froze her up, and she would not take another step forward. So the fire man, understanding her fear, motioned for her to stay where she was. For some time the two of them did not move, Astralla gently freezing on her side of the valley, the man warm by his fire.

Then after an hour, the clouds finally parted, and sunlight fell upon them. This was a very weak sun compared to the mighty star that Earth orbited, and Astralla was disappointed by the dim light it provided. But as soon as he saw the sunlight on the ground, the fire man raised his arm again, and this time he gently rolled back his sleeve so that his fingertips emerged from the dark folds. When the sunlight touched his exposed skin, he was nourished, as if he had consumed a tremendous meal, and Astralla saw him strengthen before her eyes. Then he pointed his index finger at her, and a jet of white-hot flame shot from it!

Astralla leaped back and screamed, but the jet was not aimed at her. Instead it struck the ground three yards away, and whatever chemicals were stored in the soil ignited, and immediately there was a roaring fire right beside her, far enough away not to be dangerous but close enough to warm her up. The colour rushed back into Astralla’s face and limbs, and she smiled incredulously, feeling her strength return as well. 

She couldn’t see it, but the fire man smiled as well under his hood, glad to have saved the girl. He tucked his hand carefully back into his clothes. Now the plume of smoke from his fire was joined in the sky by a second plume.

Astralla’s family eventually found her, and they gasped as they saw the wonderful sight. Two thriving fires, and their daughter warming herself by one of them! They rushed to join her, and embraced her joyfully, trying to warm themselves in the process. The fire man exposed his hand once more, and sunlight fell upon it, and he shot more jets of flame at the ground. More fires erupted, and heat bathed Astralla’s family, and their stiff bodies thawed.

Astralla’s father Alsrus rushed over to the fire man, and he tried to ask him questions through a variety of forms of communication, but to no avail. The fire man did not even turn his head to face him, and he shrank away whenever Alsrus tried to peer under his hood. Alsrus gave up trying to talk to him eventually, and he and the rest of his family rushed back to the masses of people still sitting quietly beside the spaceship. They had to know about this! With these fires, the soil could be thawed and seeds could be planted! Perhaps humanity wasn’t doomed after all!

The people needed no convincing of the miracle that Astralla’s family had witnessed; the colour in their skin and strength of their movements was evidence that they had found some source of health that was native to this planet, and that was reason enough to follow them. The thundering sound of thousands of footsteps grew louder and louder as they picked up speed, following Astralla to the valley of the fire man.

But when they finally returned, a horrifying sight awaited them. Not only had the fires gone out, but the fire man was nowhere to be seen. Desperately, the people held their own torches and matches to the soil of the valley, but there was no ignition. Only the fire man could create fire on this planet.

“He was here! He was here! He must be nearby!” cried Alsrus.

The dozens of thousands dispersed from the valley in every direction, spreading across the hills, searching for a man clad in black whose face could not be seen. It occurred to some of them that if the man shed his heavy dark garments he would be unrecognisable – so they prayed that he would keep them on.

Astralla, the most death-fearing of all of them, searched the hardest, sprinting across the hills with no thoughts of the pain in her lungs or the aching in her bones. She looked for smoke, she looked for fire, she looked for the two specks that were the fire man’s eyes.

She was the one who found him. He was tucked away in a cave, curled up into a ball, his dark clothes making him almost invisible in the impenetrable shadows. Astralla had seen how he fed on sunlight, and so he must have been starving horribly in the darkness. He must have been truly terrified.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “We are peaceful. We simply want to live.”

There was no fire in the cave, but the fire man’s eyes glowed nonetheless. It was eerie.

“We need your gift. You can create fire here. We cannot. Without fire, we all will die.”

Of course, there was no reply from the shadows of the cave. Astralla was left with no choice.

“Here he is!” she cried as loud as she could. There was a great roar of thousands of exclamations across the hillsides, and then the thundering of footsteps began.

The fire man was dragged from the cave, and his dark garments were torn from him. His face was thin and fearful, and his body scrawny and pale. But when the sun shone upon his shoulders, his muscles grew right in front of them and his body mass nearly doubled. He needed to be restrained with thick ropes, and his handlers needed to be clad head to toe in fireproof garments.

He struggled and struggled, but soon gave up, and understood what they wanted. Fueled by the sun, he shot more jets of flame, and fire erupted everywhere. The frozen soil melted immediately, and there were fifty thousand cheers from the poor starving humans, as they realised they would be able to feed themselves after all.

Indeed, months later, there was a massive harvesting of crops, and everyone was able to eat in abundance. One year later, the harvest was even larger, and the next year, even more so. The human population multiplied greatly. They never found any other life-forms on the planet, but it was a good home nonetheless, filled with natural miracles and wonder.

Eighty years later, Astralla had lived over four times the life she had hoped for, and she was profoundly grateful. Her children and grandchildren were set to be perfectly healthy, and her personal fear of death had completely dissipated. She looked back on her life with complete satisfaction.

On what was surely one of her last days, she visited the fire man, who had hardly aged at all over the last eighty years. He was still bound by ropes and giving humanity the fire that it needed. In all this time, they had not found an alternative source of heat, but then again, the fire man was such an efficient fuel source that no one wanted to replace him. In all this time, he had not uttered a word, nor aged at all. 

“Thank you,” Astralla told him. “You have saved all of our lives.”

She was not afraid to stand right in front of him. The fire man had never tried to hurt anyone. He was not dangerous. He simply looked at her, unable to understand a word she said.

“Someday, we will find another way to sustain ourselves. I am sure of it. When that day comes you will be free to clothe yourself and do as you please.”

Naturally, the fire man said nothing. Astralla grew uncomfortable.

“How is the sunlight?” she asked casually.