“Time is a game played beautifully by children.”   -Heraclitus

In the flameless temple where muddy trees reached out of the barnacle hills of Boetia, the girl struck a shard of black rock on the smooth marble. Weeks after the flood had subsided, everything was still saturated and the clouds hung heavy to marvel at their own work. In this place where the Mississippi River fed into the Gulf of Mexico, everything was either too much or nothing at all. Thirty-nine and a half days of rain swelled the river until it invited the sea in while the months of drought were washed away leaving nothing more than a flooded wasteland. But even the sky needed rest and the little that was left of Boetia stood with its feeble marble pillars pointing obliquely at the heavens. Pyrrha traced the engraved letters on one of the pillars:

Church of the One Above

Pyrrha looked up and saw many things that seemed to be One. The many grays of the cumulus clouds and their tattered pieces, the dark carrion that were its attributes, a stray balloon and the thin air between. Nobody remembered the name of the One who wielded the thunder. The god or goddess who held the three-pronged spear was just as nameless as the horn of dawn or the wet-bearded lips of an old drunk. But the tide swelled just beyond the pillars and the air was heavy with saturation. Whether the hidden sun was rising or setting was of no matter to the girl. She had to start a fire to bring it all back again.

Boetia was the sort of place where books were written to fit the common fantasies of the people. The earth was six-thousand years old and fossils were implanted tests of faith for the chosen few. Rising waters were acts of the One and science was holding court with tarot card readers. Those who were solid in their faith were turned to water when the floods took them in their homes and temples. Only the heathens had fled to higher ground to see what the gods were doing to their own nest. Pyrrha remained alone, the forgotten daughter of Prometheus, the only god whose name she could recall.

As Pyrrha continued to strike the shard of flint on the marble, her creations remained silent and half-formed all around her. If they had voices, the lumps of red clay interspersed with broken shells would have encouraged the girl in wizened tones and general cheer. But every one of the three hundred and sixty-five of them was suspended in space and time. The critical element of fire had not touched them yet. All was melting back into the earth: Water to water, mud to mud.

Pyrrha pretended to know what she was doing as the flint grew smaller and sharper as she pounded it into the marble. When she wiped the dew from her forehead, she noticed the carrion descending towards the ruins. By the time she looked behind her, a woman was already there. Pyrrha shook her head to rid herself of the illusion but the woman in tattered clothes remained. She was covered in red mud from head to foot and it was impossible to tell her age.

“You’re doing that all wrong,” the woman said. “But I appreciate the effort.”

“Where did you come from?” Pyrrha said, standing up slowly. “Ain’t seen a soul in weeks around here.”

“I live under the hills. That way,” the woman pointed, taking a long sip from a flask. “It’s dark and deserted but water never makes it that high. Want a sip?”

“I’ve got plenty of water. Everybody does,” Pyrrha muttered, looking around at her clay figures.

“Oh, this isn’t water,” she hissed, taking another sip. “It’s fire from the bowels of the earth. You need it. Fire left this place. Hell, I’ve got a bad liver and I still drink this stuff. Wanna know something funny?”

“You?”

“Well, that too. But the funny thing is, you can’t start a fire without the thing that fire forges.”

“I hate riddles.”

“That’s just because you lived in a town where riddles were about as deep as a puddle. Look in and you see yourself. Step in and you realize nothing was there to begin with. I’ll help you out. It’s simple but simple things are the hardest sometimes so—“

“You were just dying to talk to somebody, weren’t you,” Pyrrha smiled.

“Well, solitude comes at a cost and the birds that come by all repeat themselves. Where was I?”

“How to start a fire.”

“Right! You are right,” the woman laughed, taking a long sip. “You need steel. Strike the flint on the steel that was made by fire and sparks come out. You also need tinder. I hope you know all things change to fire and fire exhausted falls back into things. Just gotta wake it up. I’ll be right back.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Pyrrha laughed.

While the woman who sprung from the earth was gone, Pyrrha tended to her clay figures. A stroke of her pinky finger conjured joy while her thumb turned male to female. Giants stood amongst mere mortals while the sister she never had never seemed to follow the styling of Pyrrha’s middle fingernail. By the time she had caressed each one of them, the woman had returned and was muddier than before.

“Do you live in the mud like a frog or do you just not care?” Pyrrha smiled.

“It doesn’t matter,” the woman said, out of breath. “Here, I brought you things. A bit of a steel drum and dry wood.”

“Dry wood? How? That’s like saying dry water.”

“Look,” the woman smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. “Open the bag,” she huffed, tossing it to Pyrrha. “It’s a gift from me to you.”

“It is dry,” she gasped, opening the plastic bag. “Is this enough?”

“Just have to get it started,” the woman laughed, taking a sip from her flask. “It’ll be the first fire of the Second Fall of Man.”

“And Woman.”

“We’re still here,” the woman muttered in manic words, as she walked to the ruined temple.

In the center of the ring of clay figures, the woman crouched down and gestured for Pyrrha to join her. The day grew dark as the clouds revealed their gray udders as the storms of the nameless god did its work somewhere within. Mud-caked tangles and dreadlocks drifted back and forth like a broken metronome as the woman arranged the scene like a meth addict would a bunch of toothpicks on the floor. But the woman guided Pyrrha’s hands as they worked in unison to strike a flame. Mistakes turned into maybes and when the first sparks appeared, Pyrrha kissed the muddy forehead of the woman. Another dance of sparks and the tinder was ignited.

A little string of wood glowed before the whole world of wood caught fire. The woman raked at her cheeks as she laughed and Pyrrha saw that half of her face was burned. When she looked at the cracks in the mud along the woman’s arms, everything was mounds of scars from some fire years before. In that instant, the woman seemed ancient. She saw Pyrrha looking at the stigmata of the fire god’s essence and laughed.

“Well, nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse, huh?” The woman half-smiled. “Give a guy a gift and he turns it into a—”

Pyrrha saw the blinding light before she heard the atmosphere being torn apart and falling back together. Her ears rang in accord and she waited for the rain to fall with her eyes closed. When she felt the heat growing, she opened her eyes and flames were dancing on the bits of wood. Sunlight burned through the clouds and fell on the land like liquid. By the time Pyrrha had made sense of the changes, the woman was nowhere in sight. A pile of caked mud remained where she had been, a collection of unformed earth that fell from the one who gave her fire.

In the far-left corner of the marble temple, Pyrrha had constructed a kiln from the slabs of granite. One by one, she fired the clay figures into hard life. Stars in the cloudless sky watched as she toiled through the night in the orange glow of the contained fire. By the time the sun was reaching its empty rosy fingers across the Mississippi, Pyrrha pulled out the three hundred and sixty-sixth figure from the fire. The figure was good in her proportions, the burns along her face and right-side of her body burned away. Pyrrha left the tangles and dreadlocks in her hair, a nod to her teacher’s wilder nature. As she set it steaming next to the others, she gave it a name, too. She whispered it so close to the finished figure that it steamed from her breath.

“The One.”