I reached the cave just before dark. It’s now well after dark and I work by touch under starlight.
I’m building a fire. I sense that this is the first fire that has ever been constructed on this world. The animal that I killed implies a very clear explanation of where, or rather when, I am. How and why are well beyond my capacity to explain. There’s only the reality in front of me: a prehistoric ancestor of the familiar crocodile, among ferns and conifers, in a swamp that stretches in all directions. I suppose I could be wrong. I hope that I’m wrong.
I gathered sticks and branches from the conifers. Seed cones will burn. Ferns will burn, however quickly. Small sticks will burn. That’s the easy part. The challenge is the wood for the bow, the friction heat that raises the fire’s first spark. I occupy the time staring at the sky, mashing the branches to pulp with the stones. One or two strips I can use with the bow to make a friction fire. The rest is fuel.
It’s funny. I really have to ask why I’m even building a fire. It’s so damned hot, even at night. The fire will only attract insects. What use is the light?
I place the stick, sharpened on a rock, into a groove gouged in half of a stripped branch. Doing so gives me a feeling of power. The thought of a fire grants me a surge of energy. I want a fire because I can have one. A fire is how I will master my environment.
But fire is not won easily with wet wood in the dark. My hands are weary from spinning the stick in the little groove. I cannot see the smoke, but with my body arched painfully forward, my forearms tense at their task, I might smell the first issue of friction.
Here in my task, time loses meaning. I am blessed for my inability to meter it. There is no tick. There is only the beating of my heart. My hands ache. I stare at nothing. I listen to the rustle of the tinder.
Then it happens. Its scent is barely perceptible in the moist air, but it is there. I blow gently on the wood, so gently that I must restrict my panting, weary breath. The night is as hot as the day. I do not need the fire to keep warm, but I need the fire.
So it is. So it becomes. An accumulation of friction catches the splinters of fern. An amber glow, so small, appears in the darkness. It is like a separate star appearing in the sky. I blow gently. It twinkles. I add a small piece of tinder, encouraging it to grow. At first it does nothing, but my star still shines. It’s captured the fuel. It’s holding on. I blow on it gently again, and add fuel. It begins to grow, and to grow, and grow again. It takes the shape of the tinder, small splinters of wood. I move quickly, placing larger tinder from a pile that have pre-arranged at my side. The small fire catches, and the amber glow becomes a visible flame. I blow on it gently, adding more tinder, and soon that visible flame welcomes itself into the world.
I have created fire.
The far wall of my cave is bare. I cannot help but see it now. I have built fire. I have killed. I have declared myself.
I take my killing stone in one hand. I approach the cave wall, and carve two small gashes into the wall. The lines are small.
Outside, I see the moon, the stars, and the dark plain beneath them. The fronds wave in a night wind.
I retrieve a collection of ferns from near the cave’s base. These are not woody plants, and they burn faster than I would like. I will need to fell conifer trees in order to have a proper fire, one that lasts the night. I can make fire, though. If I have made it once, I can make it again.
I return to my cave with my branches and throw them on the fire.
Soon, insects will come, great ancestor insects that I heard of in childhood. They will be large and ugly and I will cower from them in the dark. Or perhaps they will simply be vicious and blood-sucking and many, which is familiar enough. Let them come. Let them be drawn to this new thing, unknown before in the history of this planet. Let them be drawn to the light, and learn what lives in it.
I have taken my cutting stone, which is a sand white killing stone, and begun tying it to a branch with palm fronds. I do not think it will fell a tree. I do not know if it will kill a beast. It is a tool, though. I have made an axe.
I have arrived.