The Shape of Fear

I heard it before I saw it. Footsteps in the undergrowth, or not quite, more like the sound of something moving through dry leaves with intention. I stopped walking.

Clawed prints in the soft soil a few meters ahead. Deep, evenly spaced, the spacing meant that whatever made them wasn't moving slowly. It definitely was not human and not anything I had a category for.

I stood still for a moment and thought about turning around.

Instead I followed them. I am still not sure why. Partly because I needed to know what was in this forest with me and partly because standing and overlooking felt worse.

I found it crouched over a patch of some sort of mushrooms in a small clearing, gathering them into a pouch at its hip. The skin was slick and slightly shining, like oil on water. Two horns curved up from its head. Amber eyes scanning the forest floor, long arms and the fingers at the end of them seemed wrong .

I crouched behind a log.

My plan was to wait it out, watch it and maybe learn something about it. Leaving after a while without it knowing I had been there.

The log cracked under my foot.

It turned. Our eyes met. It hissed, low and continuous, and charged.

I got the spear up by reflex more than decision. The impact knocked me back a step, wood cracking where its claws hit. I rolled sideways without thinking about it, felt the air move above my head as it swiped again, and came up in a crouch with the spear between us.

It swiped at the shaft and the wood cracked further and I jabbed forward and caught it somewhere in the ribs and it made a sound that I cannot describe well except to say that I will not forget it. It slashed my side. I went down hard, cold dirt in my mouth, the taste of it filling my head.

And then something happened that I do not have a rational explanation for.

There was heat in my chest. Not pain, not adrenaline, something else, something below those things, something that felt like it had been there a long time and was only now being asked for. It moved up through my arm and into my hand and I raised my palm toward the creature without deciding to.

Light. Orange and gold, unsteady, small.

The creature stopped.

I pushed forward with my hand and the light went with it and became something larger, a burst of it, warm and real, it hit the creature in the chest and sent it backward into a tree. It slid down the trunk. Smoke rose from where it had been hit.

Silence.

I sat in the dirt with my hand still raised and looked at my palm.

The skin was pink, slightly too warm. No burns. Just warmth.

I sat there for a long time.

Not processing it, or atleast not productively. It's more like sitting with the fact that you can't fit it into any category of knowledge you're familiar with. Fire had come out of my hand. I had not done anything to make that happen except need it to.

My side was bleeding where it had slashed me. Luckily it wasn't deep. Rather it was long and shallow, the kind that still stings insistently after some while. I pressed my hand against it.

Then the feeling arrived that I had been half-braced for some time now and hadn't had room for anyting until now. The grief of it. Not loud this time. Quieter and heavier than the field.

I dug my fingers into the dirt.

"I finally had something,"

I said. My voice came out wrong, too quiet, cracked at the edges.

"I finally had something and now I'm here. In a forest. Talking to myself. Bleeding."

I pressed my forehead to the ground for a second. The soil was cold and smelled like something i wasn't quite familiar with.

"I was going to tell her. I had it written down. I was going to actually do it."

I stayed like that for a while. Not crying, or not all the way. Something less than that and equally miserable.

The forest was very quiet.

I sat up eventually and looked at my hand again.

Fire. From my hand. In a forest in a world I hadn't known existed.

That was either the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me or the most useful and I didn't yet know which. Probably both.

I had played enough games and watched enough of the things Daiki recommended to have a framework for magic, sort of. Rules. Mana. Skill trees. Things you unlock by earning them. What had happened to me was nothing like that. There had been no indication, no tutorial, no sense that I had done something and been rewarded for it. It had just come when I needed it.

I didn't know what to do with that.

I tried in the clearing after I had caught my breath. Held my hand out. Said fire, which felt ridiculous. Nothing. Said it again with more conviction. Still nothing. Tried several other words I had picked up from games and anime that Daiki insisted were culturally essential viewing. Nothing. I looked like an idiot trying those things, if any of them were to see me doing this sort of chanting they would have definitely laughed.

I stopped and thought about what had been different.

Fear. That was the obvious answer. The creature had been about to tear into me and something had responded. Not my thinking. Something below my thinking.

I closed my eyes and tried to reach for the memory of it. Not just the picture but the actual physical sensation. The fear. The desperate, animal need to not be helpless. The pressure building in my chest and moving outward.

A flicker. Faint and brief, barely there. But there.

I opened my eyes. A small orange light sat above my palm for two seconds and went out.

I stared at my hand.

"Okay,"

I said.

Not excitement. More like cautious acknowledgment. It felt like extending it toward something you don't yet trust.

I practiced until my arms ached and my stomach was complaining loudly enough to be embarrassing. Not much success. A few more flickers. One slightly larger one that lasted four seconds before going out. No control over size or direction. No understanding of what made the difference between a flicker and something that could actually help me.

But it was not nothing. It had happened twice now and that meant it was real.

I found the berry bush again and ate until the worst of the hunger passed and went back to the pond to drink. My reflection looked the same as the morning before. Worn. Slightly wild. Eyes with something in them that was not entirely despair.

I gathered dry wood before the light went completely and sat cross-legged in front of it and closed my eyes and tried to find the thing in my chest again.

It took longer than I wanted. I had to go back through the feeling several times before it responded. But it came. A small flame, unsteady, hovering above my palm.

I touched it to the wood.

The fire caught and spread and I sat back and let the warmth reach me.

The stars overhead were different from home. More of them, or arranged differently, I could not tell which. I sat with my knees up, the cloak pulled around me and the fire doing its work. I continued to look at the stars for a long time.

I thought about the fact that I could make fire with my hand. It still didn't seem like information that belonged to my life.

I thought about Aki sitting on the park blanket with her arms around her knees looking at the river. About Daiki's voice coming down the hill asking who wanted something terrible from the vending machine. About Rui with his camera and Haru with his quiet, dry observations about everything.

About my aunt leaving the lamp on in the hallway when I was out late.

I was going to get back to all of it. That wasn't hope exactly, it was more like a decision I was making in the absence of any reason to make it, which is sometimes how decisions work.

The fire crackled. The stars didn't move. I pulled the cloak tighter and sat with it all until sleep became unavoidable.