Dark hazel eyes stared deep into the flames, watching the crimson caress before them, savoring the welcoming glow of gold from the embers. Slowly a hand moved forwards and placed a torch into the fire, allowing the coals within the end to ignite also. Feanor E�alith lifted the torch up high, holding it above him as he had become so accustomed to doing over the years, and let out a long exasperated sigh. Not in a long time had the moon elf looked into a fire and not found its dancing collage of colors to be beautiful and soothing, for now it simply aggravated him by forcing him to recall how he had turned her from wanting him to hating him. It had all been a game, and had even remained so to him as he brought the flame up to lick her ear. He didn�t know why she flinched; did she not realize he had control of it, that small orb of fire in his palm? Did she think he would go further than to warm her ear, make it glow red as the flame itself before he extinguished it? Whatever had gone through Avaene�s mind as the blaze had consumed her ear within its scolding center, it had not been pleasant and Feanor knew this from the way she had shoved him from her and trembled, huddled, against the ruin wall, demanding that he did not touch her. Her body had been curled up in such a way that he wanted nothing more than to comfort her as if he had not been him that had put her in it.

The breeze picked up, lifting the moon elf�s fiery auburn hair off his hunched shoulders but Feanor paid it no heed. No, his attentions were far too diverted by the emotions plaguing him. He wondered to himself what Avaene thought of him now; wondered if she wanted never to see or speak to him again. The way she had reacted, he wouldn�t be surprised. She had fled so fast that, despite his efforts, he was unable to catch up with her and unable to find her. �No doubt in some corner, damning and cursing my name to every God she can recite� Feanor pondered bitterly. The wind had picked up even more so now, causing his loose orange robe to swirl about on his lithe form, and the glow of his torch and the flame of the campfire to flail out towards him by aid of the breeze. Feanor�s eyes searched the blaze at his feet and he reached out, grabbing the tripod suspending a cooking pan over the campfire. The red hot iron ripped the skin off the moon elf�s hand but with just a single wince he paid this no further bother, tossing the tripod and its contents across the grove; allowing the fire to grow taller in the wind.

None of this would have bothered him so much if he hadn�t come to like Avaene with such affection these past days gone by. People had hated him in the past; his �strange� and unorthodox religious beliefs often caused him to hear the terms �lunatic,� �maniac� and �madman� thrown his way and he had always shrugged them off. Even �don�t touch me, leave me alone� were not uncommon words to his keen elven ears. But from her lips they had burnt him like winter colds. He had found the young elven girl interesting even from early on; of course she was beautiful, but there was more to her than just innocent beauty. The first time she had met him she had appeared a happy, playful and sweet girl in the Smithy�s workshop, teasing him about his poor sewing skills and encouraging him to try again. He had succeeded, just about and with some difficulty, and she had humored him. But hours later on that same day, he had seen the once sweet girl enraged and he had seen her swing her twin axes with such strength that he would have sworn she could outmatch any dwarf in the town for both speed and power, if not accuracy. In that moment what had earlier been humoring and jesting turned to insults and threats. Feanor shrugged his shoulders.

To many that may have been a reason to dislike the girl, but to Feanor it was a reason to ask questions, to find out more. Of course, he�d been made to regret trying at first but she had opened up eventually; he had been right, she was a woman with a story to tell to those she felt she could. And she had told him the story that she had kept even from her own family, a story of suffering, pain and a torment that no woman should be made to go through. Yet Avaene had. Feanor had wanted so much to comfort her, despite how tough she seemed on the surface. She had let him; not once had she ever asked about him, she knew so little about his past and his ways for she had not asked and he had not told, and yet still she had felt she could let him embrace her. He had asked her why; asked her why she had chosen of all the elves in Pilgrim�s Rest to let him be the one that she had grabbed. Perhaps, Feanor had wondered, Avaene could sense in him that desire to help her, to hold her and be the pillar of support everyone required at one point in their life; whether she needed one or not. But he had ruined that now� the willing Avaene had once held was no longer there because he had forgotten the difference between one belief and another.

The rain had began to pour suddenly, the wind bringing it down on the lone elf from the front and the feel of water pitter-pattering off his face and chest brought an even deeper frown to Feanor�s lips. The campfire was wavering and the torch�s flame was shrinking under the heavy beating of rain. �Oh this just doesn�t get any better,� Feanor thought sarcastically at the same moment as enough rainfall finally doused the campfire, putting it out and leaving Feanor to sit in no more than the tiny light of his torch. Nobody knew of the moment he had spent with Avaene behind Aisha�s cottage and through unspoken agreement they had decided that was how it was to remain. Secret. Their passion an untold tale of what Feanor now feared was no more than a three-day taster of how it felt to no longer be alone. All his life the redheaded moon elf had found support in his Deity, Kossuth the Lord of The Elemental Flame. The Firelord offered Feanor a path in life, a purpose, a reason and a meaning after his parent�s death; a place to be when his many centuries in Faer�n were up. But that support had never shown him the warm embrace of another who needed and wanted him as much as he needed and wanted them, or the tender kiss of someone who thought him more than a minion to live and to die.

Sat in the rain, water dripping from his chin and his nose, his eyes half-lidded and his body and mind both fatigued to point of collapse, Feanor remembered what the strange elf Faelari had said to him. He had told the pyromancer that love made him weak and distracted him from his aims, and Feanor had laughed the words back in his face. Never had he been forbidden to love, by church or otherwise� and yet now, as he sat alone and distracted by thoughts of one being that was not his god, Feanor began to question if Faelari had spoken true. Why could he not stop thinking of Avaene when, he knew, she was surely not thinking of him? He had told her before he had burnt her, before he had ruined everything, that he was beginning to love her more and more as each day passed. He had been telling her the truth, and as Faelari�s philosophical words rebounded around the pyromancer�s skull, he began to wonder if admitting such a thing was a blessing or a crime.

�Too late now, regardless,� Feanor spoke aloud to the dimming embers of his torch, kept alive only by the enchanted coals of Thay that resided in the end. �I have lost her now for my foolishness and my slow-wit. She looked on me with disdain and she demanded I did not touch her, much as she did when reminded of her horrific past. You wouldn�t understand, being no more than a flame that has never felt the burning of such emotion, for the rain soon will quench you until next you are reborn. And it pities me that I have been quenched tonight also, though I certainly shall not be reborn. The so-called emotion of the heart has, as the philosopher predicted perhaps, smothered my flame.�

And with those words spoken aloud and lost on the gale, Feanor E�alith stood from the sodden grass and placed his hand over the flame of the torch. The lick of the dying flame burnt his palm, shriveling the skin from the now raw flesh before it died, suffocated by the hand. Smothered out of existence.