Bellows

The fire had sunk to almost nothing in the night, a single coal buried under grey ash like a secret the hearth was keeping. Nyra knelt beside it with the girl, who held the old leather bellows in both hands, uncertain where to begin. The morning was cold enough that their breath showed, and the kitchen waited for warmth the way a page waits for its first word.

“Slowly,” Nyra said, when the girl made to pump the handles fast. “A fire is not bullied awake. You give it a little air, then you wait and watch what it does with the gift.” The girl eased the bellows open and pressed it gently shut, and a faint orange eye opened in the ash.

They worked that way for a long while, breath after patient breath, until the coal brightened and found a twig, and the twig found a splinter of kindling, and at last a small clear flame stood up and began to climb. The girl laughed, pleased, and asked if she should write the morning down in the garden book so they would remember the fire was lit on such a cold day.

“Write it if you like,” Nyra answered, feeding a slim branch to the flame. “But know what the page can hold and what it cannot. The book will say the fire was lit. It will not hold the waiting between each breath, or the ash on your knuckles, or the trust that something still glowed under all that grey.”

The girl looked at the fire, then at her sooty hands, and seemed to understand. A reader years from now would find the plain line and nod, and never once feel the cold that had come before the warmth. Yet the fire was burning all the same, and that, Nyra thought, was the part worth the breathing.