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Fire Opal ( 8 ) : On a cold winter night, there’s nothing nicer than burning a nice log in the fire. Looking like any average piece of lumber, the neatly chopped log you selected has no clear indication that there’s something special about it–until the fire gets to it. A typical fire should be red and orange and yellow, and yet this one circles through all colors of the rainbow. It smells fragrant and pleasant, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it–it just burns in beautiful, vibrant colors. As the wood burns, opalescent cracks appear through it, casting a shimmering light enhanced by the flames. By the end of it, only rainbow embers remain, sparkling like dark opals, and even they eventually lose their color and crumble away.
On a cold night like this, it had felt like the right thing to pick up a log to burn on the hearth this evening. It was a Friday night, no school in the morning, plus, his mother was going with Uncle Tyriq to Aunt Shams' holiday jazz concert, leaving Keisha and Khaz to babysit Yasmeen late into the evening. Keisha had volunteered to make some warm apple cider, and had done a grocery run on the way home, picking up apple juice, apple cider, and an orange. Yasmeen was picking the movies to watch on his laptop, which was in his backpack, and had insisted on pulling out extra warm blankets to snuggle under on the couch. Neith wasn't really helping, but wasn't being expected to help, either, on account of having no thumbs. Or language skills to speak of. Insofar as Khaz knew, she wasn't a Mauvian. But she'd still happily snuggle in Yasmeen's lap, in easy petting range of Khaz and Keisha.
Khaz...he'd volunteered to pick up the log and kindling, and had found a street vendor on the way home selling particularly nice-looking ones, smelling fresh and pine-y.
Keisha and Yasmeen had decamped to the kitchen and were hard at work mixing the juice and the cider and the spices together before throwing it on the stovetop with the orange added at the last minute, leaving Khaz to work on starting the fire. He'd looked up how to do it, and carefully, methodically set things up as the instructions online suggested he do it. Pulling out the box of matches he'd located, he struck a match and touched it to the structure he'd made in the fireplace.
It took a moment, but it finally began to catch and burn, throwing out iridescent sparks.
Wait.
Iridescent?
He had limited experience with fires, but the sparks shouldn't look that rainbow-y, even if they were just in the myriad tones he'd seen ascribed to fire opals. Cracks appeared in the wood, glowing with the same mesmerizing iridescence, emanating a pleasantly warm, spicy scent, cinnamon and cardamom and cloves and nutmeg and star anise and ginger and allspice, all rolled up into one extremely Christmas-y scent. Khaz blinked. If this was magic...at least it seemed limited to pretty colors?
"Wow, it's so pretty!" Yasmeen squealed behind him.
Khaz turned around to see Yasmeen carrying Neith and some blankets into the room, Keisha right behind her with a tray filled with mugs filled with apple cider, adding the tang of apples and citrus to the scent of the strange log.
He blinked in surprise. "That was fast."
"Not really," she replied. "You were gone a long time in here. What kept you? If it was the log, I get it, it's really pretty and magical. Where the heck did you get it?" Keisha asked, setting down the tray on the coffee table, which already held his laptop, plugged in and ready to go.
Khaz glanced outside. When had the sun set? He shook himself, worried and embarrassed by the entrancing nature of the strange log. "Umm, yeah, I guess it was really distracting. Just, y'know, one of those street vendors you sometimes see around this time of year." He got up and retreated awkwardly to the couch, pausing long enough to close the clear fire screen around the fire and then retrieve his own mug. "Yasmeen, did you pick the movie?"
Yasmeen snuggled between her brother and her cousin, Neith exiting her lap long enough for a blanket to be spread across the three humans' laps before resuming her nest on Yasmeen.
"Is it OK if we watch the fire instead?" she asked. "I think I could fall asleep to it just as easy as to a movie, and I've never seen a log like this one before. It's really pretty."
Khaz watched the flames, enhanced by the coruscating iridescence emitted by the log. "I'd be down for that. How about you, Keisha?" he asked, reaching down to pet Neith as he sipped his cider.
"Sure," she replied, also watching the fire and enjoying her own mug of cider.
They watched the fire even after they finished their cider, and it was after the concert ended that Thuraya found the three kids asleep on the huge couch in the living room, Neith snuggled with them, lit only by the dying rainbow embers of the fire. Smiling softly, she picked up some more of the blankets Yasmeen had clearly gathered for the evening, and tucked the three children in on the couth for the evening, settling on another adjacent couch under some blankets of her own.
"Sleep tight, little ones. And may this light guide you all to pleasant dreams."
