black history/futures: allying with fire

07 Feb 2024

it's feb! that means it's black history/futures month. my goal in 2024 is one flash fiction story per week. all stories from this month and past years here.

preface: today’s story is inspired by the episode of how to survive the end of the world with adaku utah.

more than the other elements, this day required pain.

after tending to the hearth fire 100 days in a row, it was time to bring the fire into myself. well… more like onto. but after the full initiation of all 4 elements is complete, into and onto stop making sense…

i held the chunk of spellbound metal in my hand. a long rod, a thick handle at one end, across from the hye won hye (the adinkra symbol meaning “that which does not burn”) on the other. i turned it over and over, stalling. was i really about to do this?

i gulped uncontrollably.

i knew the benefit. once marked by the fire, i would be able to make my internal fire external without harm. every time i tried now, i got burned. that’s normal for someone still in their allyship training, but it still sucked. i was ready for that part to be done.

but i didn’t feel ready to go through my first marking. and yet, i knew, in order to have fire as a true ally, it must be done…

words / writing / post-processing
160w / 11min / 3min