Fire in the snow

It's light again.

I look down at my hands and then at my feet: I've already started to sink down in the snow as I was waiting for the morning. I pick up the pace again. Finally, I reach a clearing in the woods and I can look up at the sky. It's still there, the Sun. It rises far off in the distance every day with the first lights of the morning and flies from one side of the horizon to the other. How naive I was to think for us to be alike, but it is the only one I know, and after keeping me company for so long I couldn't but think that the two of us resembled each other a little: we're both bright and scorching shapes of fire, endlessly walking in the same direction, yet after so long I cannot but feel so very distant from it.

I remember the first day here and he was the first and only one to greet me: birds, deer and all the other critters of the forest all ran away as soon as I stepped closer, but he didn't. He stayed up there high in the sky, much brighter than me and unfazed by our appearance, so naturally I called out to him. "You there! You're like me! Do you know me? Or do you know where are we?" I yelled out, but he didn't answer. I stood watching for hours on end, but he just kept going from one side of the sky to the other, taking the bright sky along with him. He had left a gloomy space in its stead, but in doing so he revealed to me the thousands of beautiful and bright dots further beyond what the clear blue veil was concealing, so I naturally thought that was a gift for me, and thus the first night was serene. I sat down on the charred cobble road, in the midst of rubble and debris, burnt wooden boxes, logs, planks and scorched black houses and gazed at the stars for the entire night.

The next morning, he came back bringing the light with him, but then left the same way he did before. It was only on the third day that I decided to follow him, see if it would bring me anywhere. The first steps off the cobble road and into the snow were the most painful: I would sink my feet in the snow with every step I took and a puddle of water would quickly form around me, dousing my flames, burning painfully until I would move my foot to another patch of snow, repeating the same process again and again. I realized I needed to be quick on my feet and started running, chasing him for three more days until I got here.

It wasn't leading me anywhere. In fact it may not even have known I was here to begin with. There must have been something that made us apart, something from deep within my mind telling me we were not the same. It was not gifted with a mind of its own, it couldn't act or think the way I do. For a sole moment I felt pity for it, yet I was somehow jealous of it, even if I couldn't quite figure out why at the time.

My legs feel weak as I fall to the ground with my gaze fixated on it. Inside of me, I burn with spite, jealousy. It does nothing but walk in the clear blue sky day after day after day, from one side of the horizon to the other. It can not feel, it can not think, it does not even have any freedom to move. So why, oh why, do I feel such burning jealousy for it? Maybe because, simply put, it lives contempt with its purpose, for it knows what it's been always doing and what it will forever do.

"But what about me, what do I do? What is my purpose?" I feel compelled to ask, looking down at my hands clutched in fists for reasons stemming from deep within me, feelings and sentiments that I cannot yet comprehend. My expression shifts.
"Not only that, you have a name don't you?! You're the Sun! And everybody loves you! I know it! But what about the little fires like me?!" I yell at the top of my lungs at the sky, only for nobody to hear me.

Knowledge starts pouring in my mind, not things I didn't know, but which I simply didn't know were there. Knowledge evoked by my will to express myself, to know what I was feeling why I felt the way I did. I get up and start running towards where I came from, retracing my steps, etching my footprints with each step I take, hearing the sizzling of the snow under my weight, hoping I could somehow outrun the Sun's light.

Finally, the crushing realization hits me. "Just what have I done all this time?" Even if its been but a few days since I first woke up, they now feel like a distant dream, as if only now I'm truly awake, as if every moment I had spent thus far was wasted because someone else needed do something else with it, but I am alone here.

Take a step back, analyze your surroundings, look at the bigger picture. I feel as if I knew that's what I had to do. I see trees all around me, snow is under my feet, the sky above and the Sun far in the distance. I hear sounds: the delicate chirping of birds, leaves rustling under the wind, the crackling of my flames, rhythmic and soothing, and that annoying sizzling under my feet rushing me to be stay always on the move before water starts forming at my ankles.

"I am alive, there is a world around me!" I think to myself, yet it feels wrong. "I... Who am I?" Feels more appropriate to think. I am not who I should be. "What is my purpose?" I have one, I feel like these thoughts have been granted to me by somebody, as if I exist here for a reason alien to me. I look at myself in a puddle of water yet I do not see me, there isn't a 'me' anywhere, because I shouldn't be.

For a moment dread fills my heart, I am nobody. What I know is not for me to know, I'm just borrowing all the knowledge from... him. What I look like is not right, there is somebody who would look at my face and see themselves in me: his is the reflection. There is a name hidden deep inside my mind to which I used to answer, yet it's not mine, it's his. I know there is a reason for me to exist here, but it is not mine. I do not exist for myself, but rather it's him who should be me. So why am I here?

There must be a reason for why I know all of this, for why it's me who woke up that day instead of him, for why I started walking and chasing the Sun, but now none of that feels like my doing. Desperately, I try to reach for something that is truly mine, something I can look at and proudly say that it's not his, but there is nothing around me. I have nothing yet I feel there is a part of me in this, so I reach deep in my chest and take out a piece of metal, broken, flattened and charred, with the burnt wick of a candle poking out and broken pieces of molten glass here and there.

There is no memory of why, but there is an unmistakable sense of familiarity with that broken lantern, something that I feel to be truly mine to cherish because this is no memory of his.
There is a me somewhere in who I am, and that brings me enough comfort for the moment. I may not know my name, but I know what I am, a candlelight.