Carrying the fire

Fires bring back a lot. There had been plenty of nights where it had been raining, or the territory they were in was too hot with Guard, and there had been no fire. But when there was it was easy to sit there warming your hands, cooking whatever food they had if they were lucky enough to have any, and you could feel like it was the center of the entire world. Heat and light. Life.

When he'd built the hut the firepit had just been a little cleared patch of earth; now he's dug an indentation in the ground, circled it with stones, brought in two stumps for sitting. Behind the hut he has firewood drying under a shelter. Light and life aren't nearly so hard to come by now and heat is pretty much constant but the fire still feels like it matters, like sometimes he should make it the center of things again.

He turns the spitted fowl slowly in the flames, smiling as he watches the skin darken and crackle. He could go back to the kitchen for dinner, sure. But sometimes half-burned bird that he's caught himself tastes better than even Eostre's cooking.