Dying Fire

Prologue

"Seek the truth or

Hide your head in the sand -

Both require digging."

~Andrew Nolan~

The Eternal Flame is that of an undying fire, stretching from one generation to the next in what is widely considered a sacred bloodline.

            For as long as anyone could remember, as far back as this family can search through their ancestry, there have only been females born. And in every birth, the mother would die before being able to hold the daughter in her arms for the first - and last - time. No matter whose blood is mixed into this family, the outcome has always been the same, every time. This is because the females of this sacred bloodline - each and every one of them - have been the Eternal Flame, a bringer of greatness and unity, a marvel of a person. And each one dies so that their Fire can pass to their daughter, continuing the legacy.

            Centuries pass, generation after generation growing with the knowledge of her uniqueness, of how important they are to the world. Each woman has done marvelous things; have been given the best education and training to aid the land and country they belong to, so that they can live up to the honor of being the Eternal Flame.

            But this has not been the case for the last three generations.

"It is thought that every human-being has a 'light' inside them - a sort of fire, you might say. It dims and brightens and needs a constant fuel supply: hope, ambition, any reason to continue on in life, a meaning to keep living. Not everyone's flame is the same, because with different lives came different fires. And there are some out there who are unlucky enough to not have a flame inside them.

            These 'people' are forced to feed on others' inner fires, and never die, cursed to live forever in the same never-ending cycle of killing and destroying lives. They latch onto someone until that person dies, slowly absorbing their fire by destroying their hope in life, until none is left. They feed on dying flames and forever will, until they are killed by the only people who can: their own kind - the people who are destined to suffer the same as them.

            Or, they find the undying flame that lives on in that one person in the world. It passes from one human to another, hiding amongst the ordinary flames. It dims and brightens like any other, yet can never be extinguished. It is thought that when this flame is finally destroyed, then the cursed ones will cease to exist, and become ordinary humans, holding fires of their own.

            But that flame has been lost to all of time...

            A needle in a haystack...

            Trying to discover the Eternal Flame in a field of dying Fire..."

            This is one of the last pockets of legend that's survived through the years. The people listen to it and others, each one interpreting them in their own way.

            Most see it as a metaphor for something that is an incorporeal and intangible concept, something that exists to give the weak hope in these hard times of war. These people do not believe in the Eternal Flame, in the Fires that exist in all of them - the Fires that are dimming and being extinguished as cynicism, pain, and suffering becomes the norm.

            Others see the Eternal Flame as a fairy tale to tell their children at night, to keep them from crying and to try and save them from the older children that will inevitably teach them to fight and steal to survive. These legends are simple stories to comfort the ill and injured; scared and young; and those close to death - both in body and mind - in this time of hardship.