Making a Fire

Roger pushed himself up from the course dirt, grass blades poking into his hands.

He ran a hand through his brown hair to set it properly, realizing it had started to grow out.

'I can't remember the last time I had hair!'

Roger was justifiably surprised at the fact. In the prisons on Earth, all prisoners were forced to go bald. There were just too many dangers of having longer hair when working with all the machines.

There was also the fear that other prisoners could grab it and use it to seriously hurt other inmates.

Now that he was out of the concrete box, however, Roger was able to grow it as long as he pleased. 

'Small mercies, small mercies.'

For some strange reason, he could taste dirt, which he eagerly spat out.

Wiping his face down, he brushed off a couple of clumps of the brown substance. He turned back to where he had been when he exited the dreamscape and realized there was a shallow imprint where his face had fallen.

'Note to self, make sure I'm comfortable when using the ability.'

He patted down the rest of his white tunic, but it was a waste of time. It was already stained red and brown with blood and mud, ruining the once pristine garment.

'I really need to get some decent clothes…'

Lila suddenly jolted, drawing Rogers's gaze.

Her slender shoulders poked out of her tunic, her pale arms looking even thinner in the chilling night cold. Her golden blonde hair spilled onto the ground around her, looking like a waterfall of ichor.

He crouched down beside her slowly, taking care to not disturb her rest. The last thing he wanted to do was wake her and cause her to panic.

Sighing at his inability to do anything, a sudden thought struck him.

Smiling at the idea, he quickly rose and gathered some of the spare wood from the night prior. Bringing it to the fire pit, he roughly threw the brown logs into the center. He then scrounged up some kindling and sat down near the fire, grabbing the same two stones Lila had used.

'Let's see, how did she do it again?'

He roughly banged the two rocks together, but nothing happened. He struck them again, to the same result.

He knit his thin eyebrows in confusion, struggling to grasp what he was missing. He spent a few minutes hitting them from all sorts of angles but found himself no closer to his goal. His frustration grew with time, causing him to eventually throw the objects down in defeat.

He aired his grievances by punching the ground, causing his knuckles to turn red from the strike. 

'Ouch! Who knew the cold ground could be so firm?'

He waved his throbbing hand around to try and dull the ache, but it didn't seem to do the trick. The pain did, however, stop him from descending further into anger, and allowed him to think more clearly.

He reminisced on the previous evening, closing his eyes to picture it better. Lila had held one of the rocks down on the kindling while raising the other. When she brought it down, it struck the side of the planted stone at a very small point, causing a spark to shoot off and start the fire.

Taking a deep breath to calm his mind, Roger regathered the pile of twigs and leaves and set the larger stone down on top of them firmly, causing a small groove to be dug in the soil. Steadying his hand, he raised the smaller stone up in the air and brought it down swiftly, causing them to collide at a small angle.

Immediately a yellow spark jumped out of the point of impact, causing the small pile of kindling to burst into orange flames. 

Excited by his success, he jumped into the air and laughed, proud of his efforts, even if it did take a few tries.

Although Roger did not know it, learning a skill that fast just from seeing it before was incredibly difficult, and most could never accomplish such a task without having a teacher direct them multiple times over.

Momentarily forgetting himself, Roger suddenly noticed the kindling was still outside the pit, leaving the wood dry and unburnt. With an undignified yip, he dove on the ground and half-grabbed, half-shoved, the burning ball of twigs into the center of the pit, causing the rest of the wood to be set alight.

His hand didn't escape the action unscathed either, as it just so happened to be the one that he punched the ground with earlier.

Roger bit his tongue to stifle the string of curses he was more than willing to scream into the air, trying desperately to not wake up Lila in the process. Taking multiple deep breaths, the youth rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, hoping that one of the gods would reach down and take the wretched limb and be done with it.

'Why do I keep getting hurt here? I wasn't this accident-prone back on Earth! Is this just a side effect of gaining cosmic powers from another planet?'

Putting in like that, Roger decided that it was worth a little bit of pain.

'What's growth without pain after all? This is just how things are! You suffer a little, fight a few monsters, gain unfathomable powers that contradict everything you thought you knew, and repeat!'

He was definitely taking a bit of the leap with the last part there, still hoping against all logic that his element turned out to be a useful one. He knew it was Omega tier, which meant it had the most potential, but so far it had done little in the way of helping him.

'I did get to walk across water though. I think one of the inmates spoke about some kind of religion being based on someone who could do that. One of those old age groups.'

Giving his hand some time to heal, Roger knelt down on one knee beside the growing flame, using his sword as a poker to try and coax the flames onto the wood it had yet to reach. He even began to push some of the logs nearer to Lila's side of the camp, hoping to warm the poor girl up.

'She looks like she could use it.'

He gave her another glance and tried to wonder what it was like for the teenage girl to be ripped from her family and placed on this foreign world. Despite her seemingly infinite knowledge of Avar, he knew she had to be hurting inside.

No preparation could make you ready to leave your family.

Roger found himself staring into the fire, his green eyes reflecting their powerful and vibrant glow. Strange emotions passed through them as he felt his thoughts turn towards the past, before coming to Avar or even the prison.

A few memories Roger preferred to leave forgotten tried to rise up with those thoughts, but were quickly banished back into the deep recesses of his mind.

Hoping to find a distraction, Roger stood up and walked over to where he had left the leather-bound books the System had granted him. The stack came up to the middle of his thigh, maybe 2 or so feet off the ground. Reaching down, he picked the top one off the stack and read the title.

"Introduction to Avar."

'Oh, I remember this sucker…'

He had tried to read it before dinner last night but was interrupted by Lila. He remembered how rude and condescending the foreword was, and purely out of spite he put it down beside the rest of the stack.

'Yeah, how do you like that? You can stay there and think about what you did!'

It quickly dawned on Roger how insane he would appear to anyone who was able to read his thoughts.

'It's not like there's anyone who can do that anyway! Except for the Administrator, I guess. Or the Mind Wraiths… You know what, next time the System gives me books they should send a "How to control your thoughts on a magical planet you were randomly sent to." I wonder if the System could even give me a holotext version…'

Focusing back on the stack, he picked the next one up. This one had the symbol of two hoes crossing each other, making an X shape. A pleasant farm was in the background behind them. The title at the top read "Farming for Dummies: Vol 1."

While Roger wasn't exactly very enthused about reading about plants and farming, it was something to do while he waited for the sun to rise. He had decided not to try and go back to sleep that night, it was too dangerous. 

Sitting back down next to the fire, and keeping a healthy distance from Lila's sleeping form, Roger held the book in his hands and with no further tasks on his agenda, opened it and began to read.