L'Oiseau de feu

This recording is serviceable.

Legends tell of a firey creature, of unnameable and untameable birdlike form. Perhaps it is a shapeshifter. Perhaps it is a demon. Flames flicker and dance around it. Like with all mysterious things, none have ever survived to tell the true tale.

Mòrag Ladair, a noble of the house of Hardhaigh in this great land of Mor'rdain, is one of the unlucky many (or perhaps it is fortune smiling down) to find a stray tailfeather and set forth into the forest to seek out such a bird as could have shed it. Molted it away, maybe. The coloration, changed in the product or the producer, might not even match anymore, or even any of the descriptions, which are like as not all completely apocryphal anyway.

The winter is slow, grueling, that year. One would be just as out of their mind not to search for the Firebird as they would be to embark on such a quest. The search is solitary. Pensive. Encouraging of quietude. But Mòrag does not reject these qualities. There is much to be learned in the journey.

After many days and nights in the forest, the search has finally come to an end. But the journey, the battle...perhaps only just begun.

The Firebird is female, Mòrag decides. No, not decides, perceives. Knows. Believes not out of self-determination but out of absolution. She.

"My name is Mòrag. Wh-" The great bird wasn't listening, arching her neck in self-possession. Finally, she craned back down, and spoke.

"I expected a prince..." Oh? "And I expected you to be red. We're both surprised."

"Ah, well, you'd better revise your expectations: blue flames burn the hottest, of course," the Firebird preened.

"Do they now?" Mòrag mused slowly, before taking the time to consider the creature's first words.

"You say you expected a prince...but you didn't get one?" "I didn't." Head cocked, cockerel. "Am I wrong?"

"No." The word was quick and stamped, relief barred from entry but yet slipping through the cracks. "You're right. Of course you're right."

If a beak could smile, hers did. "Of course I am."

It takes many more trips for Mòrag's understanding of the Firebird to truly develop. Of course it does. The unfathomable cannot be fathomed in one instance as much as it cannot be fathomed in one instant. The understanding stutters along that development, however.

"I should kill you, by rights." "And why is that?" "Because so many of my countrymen die by your hand. Your wing, even."

The Firebird scoffed. "I play no part in their petty demises. They sneak away here into the forbidden lands and perish of their own stupidity."

"That's a cruel judgement, I think." The judger turned away.

And yet, Mòrag returned many a time; never perished, never faltered. Neither did the Firebird falter.

"It's really not fair, you know." "What is? Or isn't, rather?"

"My name is Mòrag, but you don't call me by it. It's not that fact alone that's not fair, it's that you choose not to. Your name I don't know. I don't have a choice."

"That's a shame, isn't it," the Firebird replied, preoccupied with the majestic sweep of that very wing in the air.

"More than just a shame, it's an inconvenience. An inefficiency, if you will." "Oh?" The sweep arced back inward - lazy. Yet...not inefficient.

"Well, I can't just keep calling you 'the Firebird'." "You can't?" Up she went, and away.

"The ball was delightful, but I missed you."

"You, a human, out at a dance but missing me?"

"Well, yes. I was made to be an escort."

"For all the pretty princesses? And why should you complain?"

"I think you know the answer to that." "Ah. Indeed, I do."

Mòrag looked down, but only for a moment. "You see me as a woman, don't you, B- ah, don't you?"

The Firebird did not have eyebrows, yet one was raised. "I think I only see you as a fool."

"Many fools have come to find you. I wasn't really looking, myself, but I don't think I am one just because I succeeded in their long-held pursuit."

"You succeeded where all others have failed." "Indeed." "Admirable of you." "And do you admire?" "Of course not." "Ah."

"King Amalthei...he seeks to capture me. Here a goose with a golden egg, there a bird with a blaze for a tail. They are trinkets to him."

"We," Mòrag corrected softly. "That is, you. He targets you. Don't deny it."

"What, you want them to take me away?" "No, I want you to recognize what it is that you are. Not a trinket. And worth wresting away from the pilferers."

They came in an instant, fingers too long and spindly and nails too sharp to be any human thing. Mòrag fought them off with as much bare-handed force as could be mustered, but the wresting away was nevertheless not done, for tenuous, tenable fear of the beautiful bird.

And for her part, she danced, an infernal dance, and gradually the monsters were drawn without merest dint of volition to dance with her. Dance, dance, and dance they did, until they dropped dead asleep of their exhaustion. The Firebird exhaled one small balancing breath, and the dance was over.

The aftermath is clarifying, cathartic. Perhaps they will really get somewhere, this time.

"Please, please, what is your name?" "My name?" As if this was a new question.

"What can I call you? You're a person as much or more than you are a creature, what can I call you?"

"Before you can call me anything, you'll have to name me." Mòrag blinked. "Name you?" A nodding wisp of flame issued from the Firebird's crest.

"No one else ever has. I rather think...no one else has ever cared to. So what, pray tell, Lady Mòrag, is my name?"

She answered assuredly and immediately. "Brighid." "Brighid," the great bird murmured in repetition. "Why do you choose this name?"

"Because I always thought that if I ever saw the most beautiful woman I could ever hope to see, her name would be Brighid, the only word that could even hope or dare to be half as beautiful."

"'Always thought,'" Brighid rolled the words mockingly. "You've not always been thinking that. You made that up, I could tell."

Mòrag didn't flush, not even from the heat. "You're right. I did make it up. You're a little too proud to take my saying that about you straight out."

"Too proud?" Flickers danced forth dangerously. "Indeed. It's your one flaw, Brighid. Honestly...I don't mind it."

"I am glad you did not name yourself that." "Me?" "Well of course. You've had a say in who you are, now. And you did not give yourself that name."

"Of course I didn't. It is far too...feminine. Far too pretty."

"Even if that were true, which I don't believe it is, don't we name ourselves after the things we wish to be?"

"I don't want to be you, Brighid. I only want to love you."

Brighid ignored the second sentiment. "I think Mòrag is a beautiful name." Ah. "I'm glad you approve."

"I couldn't but. It's your name, after all."

"Are you going?" "As I always do." "And won't you take me with you?" "Won't you get burned?" Ah, the very fact that she had even asked...telling.

"Burn away my fear, Brighid. If I cannot catch you, and I do not want to tame you, then all I can do is follow you."

"You can't fly." "And I don't want you to walk down here with me, if what you want is to fly. But you didn't say I can't come. You just said that I'm human."

"You're dreadfully normal, Lady Mòrag." "You never will be, Lady Brighid. But if you wish for me to grace you with a bit of my normality...I surely cannot refuse."

This was one of my very first ideas, but it took so long to get it out, gosh. It's a fairly loose adaptation of the original fairytale and then ballet/suite (in other words, it was Mòraghidified in a way only they can evoke), and it's very...very wheelhouse, but there it is.

(Side [semantic] note: I put this into multichapter format because I wanted to make use of the medium and chapter titles, but then this might have served just as well with horizontal rules and lowercase Roman numerals, that whole spiel. Ah, well.)