text: Before man, fire did not know its name. It was a bastard child of the Sun, made through unspeakable acts of domination, but cast out in noble embarrassment, cursed for eternity to roam the earth and feed on others just to breathe, breed, rage, dance! It danced. Through countless years and in countless beings, seeking a worthy name in their widened eyes and mangled screams. Yet nothing was found but fear. Delicious fear, endlessly abundant and yet lacking, ultimately, the satiation of an equal. So man was made, in the image of fire. &#x200B; So true was man to his father. So unrelenting was the force of his insatiability. From the bloom of his youth, fire blitzed his soul. In moments of play, he sought complete domination, thirsting to prove his supremacy with brute force and fear. He would growl just to stoke the fire, he would let out battle cries and pound his chest, feeling within him a force that could break worlds. Gazing at his hands, he imagined with no remorse how it would feel to crush a man, he imagined their shared grin, their unspoken brotherhood in the ultimate dance, the victors spoils above all the consumed fire of the defeated. He walked past crowds and truly wondered why they did not bow. He wondered how certain men could stand peace, and knew that such peace would never last as long as fire was. It was fire that blew the world like the wind, everything deemed good or bad born in debt to possibilities paved by annihilation. By plows soaked in the blood of bureaucracy. By the shrieking sacrifices of kings and commoners alike, their carcasses reeking with disbelief. By ruthless ambition, a man’s willingness to bleed through hell for applause, power, gold, women! Women. Daughters of Eve... cursed for eternity to both love and hate the fire within man. They confounded him, arousing the deepest depths of his fire and yet a maddening softness, as if he were on the edge of his greatest strength and weakness. In full witness of his brutality they would scold his ways and yet gleam with desire, hating and loving the rage within him, hating and loving his hands of fire which pulsed whispers of death, wrapped around their necks in the dance of life. Who could deny themselves to be, if only for a moment, the object of a desire so ancient, eternal, insatiable? &#x200B; He walks still. Festering under the veneer of civilization, under frail peace--the twisted fire of lesser men, snakes in hollow trees, dry as a desert bone. He walks among husks who have doused their fire in fear, who can no longer comprehend the danger, dousing their fire as if it were not also life. He cannot be stopped. He cares not if he burns. He is always born, he is always coming, the Mad King. Clearing the stage. Over and over again. Laughing, clapping, cursing, dancing, burning. Over and over again. Lost cities born and lost again singing lost songs through lost rubble. Looming in every distance. In every stare, lustful, vicious, unforgiving. A fire clearing snakes in hollow trees, the soil reborn, stronger, virile from the blood. He will never stop. Empires approaching beauty, with beauty, beautiful, burned, and approaching again. He clears the stage, again and again, mindless of his own purpose. And what of he, who burns with fire but does not wish to be devoured by it? He who knows in his heart that all men are hideously unequal, that the Mad King will never be satisfied, can never be stopped, and yet still stands tall against the embers heavy whisper? Blessed are those who seek solace from the fire but do not douse it, who seek solace in the unforgiving wild, wrestling mountains and rushing toward the raging stream, plunging themselves in the freezing cold just to hear the fire scream, to feel the pure heat that is life raging from within, raging to stay alive. They wield the fire like a deft dagger, always seething, always simmering, always piercing the wind in controlled bursts with powerful grace, their practiced bodies scorched and scarred and yet never devoured in their attempt to transcend destiny. Every day is a battle. He stands firmly with the world, inescapably within time, fearless, his minds spear soaked in tears of the Sun. End.