Flokk Thurisaz’s words were calm as his movements with a flame staff were methodical. Each twist and twirl brought the lick of the fire close to his skin and tight clothing. His footsteps carefully placed to flirt death, redirecting and transmuting the fear and light into a dance of warrior grace.

  “First, swipe,” Flokk instructed Jara, who stood opposite him holding a staff of her own and mirroring his movements, “from the heavens over your right shoulder, the staff should be nearly out of hand. Then, twirl and point the staff at your foe, bringing it down on the nape of their neck. Follow through and slide the shaft towards you, bringing the flame over the same shoulder. Finally strike at the earth to your left, narrowly missing the soil and finish the arc.”

  “I think I get it,” Jara insisted, this not being the first time she’d wielded a firedancers’ staff in the months since joining the troupe.

  With her right arm up, gripping the shaft of her staff and flames licking against her forearm – protected by a fireproof envirosuit, specialmade for training new members of the troupe – she swung down as Flokk showed her, striking an invisible target in their would-be neck just above the collar. Except, following through, instead of gracefully sliding down her grip her hesitation with the heat caused the staff to slow prematurely.

  Jara struck downward, her staff rebounding off the ship’s decking, its flaming tip rearing up to impact her in the gut with a burst of embers. Wincing, she dropped the fiery stick on the decking and dropped to her knees as the wind was knocked out of her. Flokk rushed over, extinguished, and picked up the staff before it rolled into something more flammable.

  “So-so,” Flokk said with a chuckle, “You’ve done this manoeuvre a thousand times without the flame. You’re letting its heat get to you.”

  Jara tried to deny it, but still gasping for air she was only able to get out a defiant, “nuh-uh”.

  “You’ll have to keep trying,” Flokk insisted, “or you’ll never conquer it.”

  “Why?” Jara asked, retaking her feet. Flokk handed her back her staff.

  “Why? You don’t want to learn?” asked Flokk. “Tell me now and we can stop. Your path need not be ours.”

  “No. Why now?” Jara asked. “I’ve been here for –what– ten months now? Now suddenly you trust me to train with actual fire?”

  “Nearly twelve months, in fact,” said Danabelle, stepping past the threshold into the makeshift training stage centred in the ship’s cargo bay.

  It was true, Jara Pell had been wayward with the troupe for a little over eleven and half months, the very same troupe of firedancers that demonstrated their prowess in front of her, Bael, and Teikun Gunma himself; a show that convinced her to uproot her barely planted sapling of a life. Instead in a woefully foolish decision she decided to follow this group of strangers into an even stranger life, training to dance and move as they did.

  Danabelle McKoya, or “Dan-Dan” as she was known, stood in quiet consideration of Jara, looking at her grip, her stance, and more importantly the fear that washed across her face.

  “Stop worrying about questions outside this stage,” said Dan-Dan, “focus on what you can control, focus on the flame.”

  “Focus on your staff,” Flokk corrected. “The flame is superfluous. It is ephemeral. It cannot hurt you if it cannot be made to linger.”

  Dan-Dan nodded in agreement.

  Flokk, the troupe’s master-of-arms and senior-most member, nodded and relit the tips of Jara’s staff with a blowtorch that he kept on a reel at his hip.

  “Again,” Flokk instructed.

  Jara again raised her staff, striking an imaginary enemy at her front, only for hesitation to rear its ugly head. This time the rebound of the staff sent it cartwheeling like a warship’s kinetic round over her, missing her head by an inch.

  Dan-Dan and Flokk both chuckled. This time though as Flokk rushed to confiscate her staff, Jara quickly regained her footing and reclaimed it, hoisting it again towards the bulkhead above still lit. Flokk shrugged, a little impressed.

  “Better,” Flokk admitted.

  Jara tried again, and again failed, but regained her composure this time before the staff could leave her grip.

  “If I may cut training short today,” said Dan-Dan, a finger raised, and Jara lowered her staff. Dan-Dan gestured with her head for Flokk to leave them. “And Flokk, if I’m not mistaken it smells like Amelie’s got fresh-baked duck pide bread in the oven.”

  “With time you’ll get it, of that I’m sure,” Flokk said, reracking his staff and heading swiftly to the mess hall. “Remember to extinguish your staff before you leave.”

  Flokk was a big man, bald and with a short trimmed peppery beard, he stood nearly a head above Bael as Jara remembered and often reminded her of him. It had been little over a week since she’d spoken to Black Dog, who’s everclad support for her still left her with a sense of undeserving unease. He remained the voice that centred her, that urged her to follow her heart. For now though, her heart travelled with her away from the seat of Drassil, away from her newfound father’s estate. Despite this and despite his busy schedule as a Jarl and hers in training to become a firedancer, he made the effort to meet her on a bulletin every other week.

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  The pain of Jonothen’s death and the events on Valrakee still hurt, but had begun to fade. Just lingering enough to add to her loss in composure.

  Of the nine members of the troupe that Jara had met at the palace on Drassil, only Flokk’s staff-wielding counterpart Jose had left – retiring only to be quickly replaced by their newest recruit and adept with flaming hand fans, Ruby Odoacet; an enigma of a person who remained locked within a custom and obviously expensive environment suit with an opaque visor. The remaining members aside from Dan-Dan and Flokk were Menya Oca?a with her flame-laden hoop, the twin javelin throwers Amelie and Ahmad Jhet, Candle Wence with a lit ball and chain whose ironic name didn’t escape her, and the musicians Tomonaga Nagumo Ade on a set of a hang drums, and Oleksander Yurissen with his traditional islander war drum, makes nine.

  They also travelled with several other acts aboard the troupe’s independent ship, the Troubadour – a light duty, underpowered and bulky shuttle known as a starbus – that would accompany them on stage. Most notable was the enigmatic and seldom-seen-wandering-the-ship entity with an extra pair of surgically-attached legs, known as The Spider du Mzam, who Jara had only seen through backstage curtains where she tended to the troupes’ implementents before and during the shows, never getting to truly sample the displays for herself since her first exposure to them on Drassil.

  With training over, Jara went to extinguish the flames only for Dan-Dan to stop her.

  “Leave them,” she insisted, “you need to become accustomed to their presence. Learn to forget their presence but never unlearn their danger.”

  Jara nodded, “what did you want to discuss?”

  Dan-Dan let out a huff, stepping towards her. “How have you been fitting in?”

  "It's been... challenging," Jara admitted, her gaze shifting from the still-burning flames on her staff to Dan-Dan's expectant eyes. "Every day is a battle between who I was on Valrakee and who I’m becoming. You have all been so welcoming and supportive, just as Jarl Kagawa has, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m still trying to find my place."

  Despite the distance, and his import as one of the most powerful men in the Stj?rnrike, she wasn’t exaggerating about Bael’s intentions towards her. His support and warmth had been everclad, and Jara could feel herself beginning to warm to him.

  A measure of guilt always kept her back though– kept tugging at the back of her neck just as the howls of the warriors in their last stand, of the cries of what woke just out of sight, and of the memory of her own father hopefully sending her off. And in that Jara found a similarity. Bael had sent her off, full of support and of hope, just as Jonothen had.

  She could feel it, the face of her father, the fear that broiled in the dark, the pain and the horrors slowly but surely dissipating. It had been nearly one year since she was rescued from cryo-sleep, nearly three since the attack on Valrakee.

  Dan-Dan nodded, understandingly, “I get it. Not many have lived to pick up the pieces after what you’ve been through. Remember, each of us came to this group carrying our own shadows. It’s not the absence of fear or pain that defines us. Rather, it’s how we dance with them in the light of the flames we wield.”

  Jara listened to Dan-Dan’s words, feeling a trickle of resolve spark within her, then faded in the backdrop of the cries of the enemy.

  “It’s what’s in those shadows that gives me pause, that truly terrifies me,” Jara admitted. “I’ve not told you or the others here, but I remember things. Things, sounds, feelings – that still wait for me in my bed every night. I just don’t know how I’m ever to conquer them or if they’re just going to one day get loud enough to consume me like they should have back on Valrakee…”

  "That's a journey we all must undertake," Dan-Dan replied, placing a reassuring hand on Jara's shoulder. "In this troupe, you're not alone. We’re bound by the fire we share. Give it time, Jara, and you'll see your strength. Not just to wield the flame, but to illuminate the dark spaces within yourself and among us."

  “Thank you, Dan-Dan. I will try. I’ll learn to dance with my shadows, with the flames,” Jara said, “and maybe, in time, I’ll find that part of me that’s been lost.”

  “That’s good,” Dan-Dan said, wrapping her arm around Jara and squeezing her tight enough to bring the flame tip of her staff uncomfortably close.

  “What did you want to speak to me about?,” Jara asked, “not that I don’t appreciate your words, it’s just the first time anyone’s cut Flokk’s training sessions short.”

  Dan-Dan paused for a moment, looking into Jara’s eyes.

  “It’s Ahmad,” Dan-Dan sighed, “you remember that he went and saw a doctor back on Fjallkaze?”

  Jara nodded, slowly. She recalled the mishap that prompted his visit to the doctor, a specialist recommended to them by The Spider du Mzam. During a performance which came to a middle with Ahmad and Amelie, the javelin-thrower twins’ act, they had performed her usual acrobatics while tossing back and forth lit javelins. As Amelie had been expecting to catch a throw from Ahmad timed precisely to pass by her right ear, instead the sharp, flaming end had found purchase in the meat of her shoulder.

  Amelie’s wound had healed, as had her spirits, but neither of them had performed since that day.

  “That little accident we had last month, it wasn’t some freak occurrence,” Dan-Dan continued, “He just received a bulletin from the doctors, and as hard as it will be for us all, Ahmad won’t be performing with us any longer.”

  Jara cocked her head in shock, “is he dying?”

  “No,” Dan-Dan chuckled, “gods no. It’s some degenerative disease, I think they called it XSE. It can be fatal but luckily they caught it early and it doesn’t look like it has spread past his optic nerve.”

  “XSE?” Jara pressed.

  “You’re going to make me pronounce it? Fine. But, don’t quote me on this,” Dan-Dan strained her brain glancing at her terminal, “...xeno… xenophthal… Xenophthalmic Spongiform Encephalopathy.”

  Jara hung her head, “...it sure sounds serious.”

  “Don’t you worry, he’s not going anywhere,” Dan-Dan assured her, “we take care of our own. He will need our comfort though –and plenty of pide.”

  …So that was the reason for Amelie’s impromptu duck pide, Jara mused.

  “What about Amelie, will she be performing with the rest of the troupe at the next show?”

  Dan-Dan shook her head. “No, Amelie’s decided to hang up her hat as well. I don’t suppose she wants to dance without him. And, that’s actually why I wanted to speak with you. Without Amelie and Ahmad we’re down an act. I know you’ve been training as Jose’s replacement, but I was hoping you would feel ready to step onto the stage with us tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Jara said, her eyes wide, “You really think I’m ready for that?”

  “Think of it as a trial by fire,” Dan-Dan said with a smirk.

  “That… doesn’t fill me with a ton of confidence.”

  “I’m only joking. I’ve seen you training, and I know there’s a lot of talent hiding beneath your surface if you could just get out of your own head. We aren’t asking for a grand display, but think of it as your first taste in front of an audience. All you need to focus on is filling in some stage time, nothing more.”

  Jara considered it for a moment before replying, “I can do that.”

  “Fantastic!”

  “Just don’t let me make a fool of myself,” Jara pleaded.

  “We’ll all be there to help you find your feet,” Dan-Dan said with a smile, “Now, let’s put those flames out and join the others. Amelie’s duck pide won’t eat itself, and tomorrow awaits.”