Fire Like Ice by Lferion

Fire Like Ice

Fingon would not have anticipated that he would ever find himself thinking of heat the same way he thought of extreme cold, and yet, here he was.

Fine red-brown dust puffed up from the ground under his feet, and thin stalks of dry grasses crackled. Wildfire had come through not long ago, a swift low flame, but there had been little to burn. Not like Ard Galen before it became the Anfauglith, dense with green grass and bushes, little streams everywhere one looked. This land had been dry for a very long time, baking in air that shimmered with heat on every surface, that pulled moisture from lungs and eyes and any exposed skin. As the Ice had frozen those same, and one dealt likewise to protect oneself. Dress in layers of fine wool over linen, wrapping and shading face and hands, filtering dust from being breathed in. Make shade for oneself as one could. Move slowly. Conserve but do not stint of water, nor of salt. Be wary of metal and stone, burning like forge-iron, like Ice.

But, unlike the Ice, they could see where they were going; guides who had been there before. They had clever conveyances for their goods and gear, light and durable. They had enough water and supplies. And this ground did not shatter neath one's feet.

However the danger from uncaution was much the same, and what of Yavanna's creatures that made a life in these inhospitable conditions were as well-defended and well-adapted to the heat and brightness and drouth as those of the Ice had been to the cold and dark and excess of nigh undrinkable water. Thorns and venom

This seventh age of the world saw inventive means of conjuring sweet water, coaxing it from air and earth where it would seem there was none to draw. Could see storms of wind coming in time to take shelter from them, communicate over distance with devices much like Feanor's long-ago palantiri. Once it seemed they flew in the air, not unlike Vingilot, and possibly still did, but no longer lightly.

Now these journeys were on foot, and went forward according to the rhythm of the day. Shelter in the shadeless hours when the sun glared down, under the canopies that reflected back light and heat, travel when the sun was low, and into the night when there was moonlight or the sky was clear enough of dust for starlight to be sufficient. They had lamps, but they were not for distance, any more than the carefully kept Feanorian lamps had been. They made the night camp safer, allowed for cooking and planning, playing and companionable gathering, a cool not-fire that served as well for that as any consuming fire of wood or peat or coal, and produced no smoke.

It had been many, many years since Fingon's first life, and the hroa he wore now had never known the Ice, nor any of the other trials and travails of the First Age; and yet his present toes recalled being frost-burned, and they ached and sparked and vociferously complained at the heat beating up from the ground, setting those ghosts of pain alight. Lungs that remembered struggling with air like knives, the poisoned fume of dragon fire and the choking outflow of Thangorodrim’s dread furnaces now struggled with this desert’s fine and sharp-edged dust, the withering breath of air that scorched the throat and set one coughing, harsh and dry.

(The sunlight, hammering down, set alight the invisible, remembered lines of fire of the balrogs' whips of flame, on his back and sides, around his elbows, incandescent agony, for all it had not lasted long. Not what he would choose to remember if he had a choice, and he wondered why it persisted, here. If there was something the memory was trying to tell him. As a message, it was obscure.)

At least, like the Ice, and unlike anything of the iron hells, there was no malice in the heat. It sapped at strength, at energy, made sleep a trial, but it was only physical, to be endured, worked with, accounted for. It had no moral weight, no doom, no spiritual aspect in itself. That alone made it easier to deal with.

And entirely unlike the Ice, this was a relief mission, the opposite of an exile. In another day or two, they would reach the mountains that wavered like a mirage in the distance, and shortly after that, the gate to the research outpost (mostly Dwarves, but not entirely) they were supply and relief for. It would be very good to get out of the heat and under stone.

A very faint rumble came to Fingon's ears, more sensed than heard. It was the time in the afternoon when clouds gathered high in the sky, but so far had stayed aloof and remote, giving neither shade nor rain. The return expedition would not begin until the summer rains had started (the observers of the airs high in the sky were sure that *this year* the rains would come, but Fingon had heard that before) or after the evenings began to lengthen again.

But thunder was a good sign, even though dry lighting was not. Mayhap the rains would come, and that soon. He would very much enjoy the scent of rain in the desert, almost indescribable, instantly recognized. Petrichor, in the language of the Edain. Perhaps he would make a riddle for it.

Maedhros would smile at his glee over a smell, a rain-smell, especially considering that Fingon had agreed to be the Finweion way-finder for this expedition because he was feeling Hithlum's damp -- and because he was curious about this desert which he had not seen before, but mostly the damp.

On the whole, he was glad that Russo had not come on this expedition, but he was missing him more than usual, for such a relatively short time away. Mayhap it was the memories of the Ice, and the sense of teetering on some unknown brink that was the cause.

The heat continued punishing as they came near the end of the journey, but on the last day, the mountain gate only a march away, Fingon emerged from the shade of their mid-day rest-camp, and looked up to see growing thunderheads like great castles in the sky, faint curtains of virga wisping beneath them. The rains *were* coming.

They reached the mountain gate just as the clouds above them began to burst.

Once everyone was in and he was sure that no-one was injured in the last rush to get all under cover, greetings and hugs and his immediate responsibilities complete, Fingon went back out the gate to the stone-paved forecourt that looked out over the desert they had traveled. The rain was coming down in great sheeting drops, hammering the ground like the heat had hammered. He stood there, face tipped up to the clouds, arms outstretched, hands cupped, letting the water pour over him. It did not rain like this in Hithlum, though Himring had occasionally known summer thunderstorms as furious. A mighty work of Manwë and Ulmo and Aulë all three, a rejoicing of might that would revive the earth and bring forth life. He breathed in the wet desert-spiced air, happy.