Chapter Text
Keith’s first happy memory was more of a feeling and a collection of fleeting images than a concrete memory. It was from a strange perspective where nothing really could be seen clearly not in color, shape or size but the emotion of the moment was pure, unadulterated love and safety. The warmth of his father’s voice and the murmuring cadence of it was the only other thing that rang true and clear in those early memories. The timbre and warmth of his voice seeped into Keith’s very bones every time he recalled the memory and lulled him into a calm that nothing else ever could.
The comforting flashes of colors, smells and sounds of his youngest years were moments he kept close to his chest. It was something he guarded with a jealous desperation and that determination was what kept him going all these years. He never shared a single second of any memory because they were his and no one else’s. He heard other’s tell their stories of their pasts with such a callous disregard to their value and vowed that he would make sure that if the day ever came when he wanted to share these precious fragments, he would make sure they knew that they were worth the world.
His time among the sand was never a completely lonesome one. He was always accompanied by someone or something. For a long time it was just him, his father and the stars. The two of them had made a good life for themselves in the sandy expanse. They spent hours learning every grove and whisper of the area, they learnt every plant and animal around - deadly or useful. It was where he and his father made up the stories of the aliens in the sky, where he fell in love with the silence and found a respect for danger and learnt that sometimes life was deadly.
It wasn’t until his father died that the illusion his father had so carefully crafted with legends and facts shattered.
The desert was no one’s home, not truly - but it could bring anyone a temporary relief.
All of the flames and the stories they’d whispered late at night had etched into his skin and wove itself deep into him. It was spending his first eight years of life in the sand that made the sense of belonging to this wild and dangerous place grow in his heart. Everything pushed him to take sanctuary here, under the scorching sun, when his world shattered for a second time. This time, there was no illusion of wonder, only respect. It was a beautiful view, but it was like a siren that lured you with beauty only to kill you for underestimating it.
Returning to the desert was not greeted with any welcoming. Regardless, his pulse thrummed calling out a greeting. Home. His instincts whispered. Every fiber of his being relaxed - not because of the memories of playing amongst the sand before he learnt to walk, not because of the years of learning the intricacies and secrets - but because here he could be anything. It was an empty expanse that held no judgement. It noticed your existence like an elephant noticed an fly. A possible inconvenience but really, was nothing of consequence. If one were to respect its majesty the desert was a place where the greatest achievements could come to existence. So it was here that Keith’s flame burned the brightest. Where he really learned how to tame and temper the flame that burned so ferociously within him.
With his father, he learnt the way of the sand - how to walk the desert to reach your destination in the most safe way possible, how to find food, how to find shelter in a pinch. There was so much he learnt from his father’s gentle guidance about the beauty of the emptiness of the desert that as a child, he fell in love. His father’s familiar accent guided him and filled him with wonder and awe for the little things. He taught him of how the desert came to be, how the earth beneath their feat spun on an axis and was but a speck in the infinite cosmos, but it was this speck that was so blindingly brilliant and life changing, so you must never ever dismiss the finer details. Really, looking back Keith wondered if his father was a poet, because he fell in love with it all. He fell in love with the musk of dust, the color of the sunrise bleeding into the sky, the shine of the stars and the chatter of wild life.
But above every survival tip and story his father made, Keith was in love with fire.
His love for it dwarfed everything else.
His father taught him that fire was his only friend out in the desert. He taught him how to tame and temper it, how to corral it into a space and keep it there, he taught him as much as he could. It would be his only companion on cold nights and would be one of his most valuable tools for survival. After all, the desert - for an novice - is a confusing mix of contradictions of constant noise and sudden, piercing silence; of blistering heat and bone freezing temperatures. However, it wasn’t just the usefulness of fire that made Keith drawn to the flames like a moth - it was the memories that surrounded it. It was the fortress that they had unknowingly created every night with the laughter and warm affection that can only be between a father and their child. The flames crackled in a symphony that sung an endless tune that told the story of their time together. At the fire-side there was a stillness that you could get no where else, it was a stillness that held its breath, that listened to every sound and watched every small movement. By the fire Keith felt powerful, he felt as if time held still and nothing but the embers mattered.
The day his father died there was rain.
To the recently-turned eight year old Keith, it felt as if this was the universe mocking him. Telling him that he got too close to the flames, that it was time to let the flames die down and start looking to the ground and not the sky. When you live in the desert, the rain meant life and hope.
But it was raining and his dad was gone.
It was in that downpour that Keith really fought for the first time in his life. He clung to the play set besides the school, shaking as they tried to explain to him what had happened. He glared daggers as they tried to come closer, as they tried and they tried to tell him that they were so sorry but his papa was gone.
An accident they said.
Come with us, they said.
We will take care of you -
but no one could take care of him like his dad.
His voice rattled like a snake’s, warning the dumb adults who dared to tell him that he had to leave he wouldn’t let them take him. But he was only an eight year old, there was only so much he could do. His eyes burned and the world blurred as the view faded away when they finally forced him into the car. Behind them, smothered by the rain, was the last fire his father would ever light and tame reduced to smoldering embers. By the time the rain stopped there was nothing left but silence.
Once again, the desert was empty.
But when the night came, Keith was wide awake on the strange bed they had given him. It wasn’t the bed he had his dad shared, it was too small and too hard. The room around him didn’t smell right and the window was too far away. But that, at least he was able to fix. The 8 year old got out of bed and pushed aside the curtains to stare at the stars. He wasn’t stupid, he knew his daddy wasn’t coming back - not after they put the box - the coffin - in the ground. But looking up at the stars a new flame was lit as the ashes of the day began to settle; a flame that burned at Keith’s very core and could be seen by all the moment they caught his eye. Keith was reborn that night. He looked up at the sky that betrayed him and took away his father and the flames and issued the challenge:
“Just try snuffing this flame out!” Keith took the step forward into the embers and let the fire run through his veins.
But like every new flame, he had to take shelter and protect his resolve, lest the flame be smothered before it could truly burn. As the wind howled outside the room he was assigned in the group home, Keith lay wrapped up in the thick blankets shaking. That night, Keith broke into tears and learnt what true grief felt like. Come morning, he would burn and become like molten lava, waiting for the right moment to cool and harden into a formidable weapon. But for now, he was nothing but sparks of rage and grief.
.
.
.
Years later he would go back to the desert, this time with his flame burning fiercely. His father may not have been with him anymore, but the words he spoke stayed with him. “Fire is your most versatile ally in the desert. But be careful not to get too close or to let it get out of control, or it will burn everything. Remember Keith: if a fire ever gets out of hand - smother it. If it’s too big, use water or run.” He had become a bonfire, and if life hadn’t been able to snuff him out by now, even with his own flame burning him so many times at the start, well - nothing could stop him now, not even the desert.