It was a dark night. There were ominous clouds in the sky cloaking the moonlight that had shined the night before. It was as if the clouds had prepared the rain, but the rain had refused to drop from the heavens. Because of this the scenery presented itself as glum and forsaken. The rotting leaves on the trees rattled as the eerie breeze breathed right past them. The rivers left a hollow sound of water trickling through the smooth rocks that had no rays of the moon to reflect back. The silence itself was deafening. The animals were all quiet. There were no orchestras of frogs and crickets, nor was there any sudden bellows of wolves. The forest was quite literally dead. Everything that was alive seemed to be confined in a mute chamber, not letting out a sound.
In all of it, there lay a little cave with its mouth agape. A small fire flickered every time a piece of firewood was thrown into it. The sounds of the fire's hunger filled the soundless void. It illuminated many objects that surrounded it, making them dance on the cave's walls. Within those objects, two shadows appeared to stay still. One was of an old man who was keeping the fire alive tending to its ever-growing appetite. He had pure white hair and dark purple eyes. If one did not look closer, they might fool him as being black. He was tall and slender but did not have a weak aura around him. His face was full of wrinkles near his mouth and eyes, showing a life filled with joy and laughter. He wore a dark green shirt made out of cotton, wool pants, and a cheap brown cloak that he wrapped around himself. He smiled at the other shadow, revealing his full set of teeth. A high-pitched laughter emerged out of the cave. The other shadow was a child. A child watching the old man feeding the fire with wide, whimsical eyes. His hair was ruffled when the old man stroked the child's hair with his bony- but warm- fingers. Light brown hair fell past his eyes, and the child scooped it up and pushed to the side. By doing so, he let his facial features exposed to the fire. He had a sharp nose, high cheek bones, and baby-fat filled cheeks. His eyes were a light shade of jade green which reflected the now not-so-small fire. He shrugged off his bear skin cloak to reveal a patchy mess of a shirt. Dirty purples, dark greens, and navy colored pieces of cloth were sown together to make a tangible article of clothing. His pants on the other hand were a solid maroon.
The cave was only around thirty by twenty-five feet (9.144 by 7.62 meters), but the duo made due with their cozy surroundings. The old man had a stack of fish, which he had caught in the river yesterday. They were starting to give off that fishy smell, so he skewed them with long branches which the child had helped sharpen. The child crept closer to the old man and sat in his lap. He tugged at the old man's cloak and asked him a question, "Grandpa! Grandpa! Why does the fire burn like that?"
The old man chuckled. 'Oh the curiosities of the young!' He looked at his grandson and contemplated a simple way of explaining it to him. "Let me ask you this, what do you breathe in order to live?"
"Air!" his grandson immediately responded.
"But what is in the air that we breathe, child? Air is just a combination of impurities, but we as humans tend to depend on one of them."
"Oh! We talked about this before! Is it Oxygen?" he lowered his voice at the end as if he wasn't sure.
"Excellent!" the old man exclaimed. The child's face lit up with a smile. The old man continued, "We now know that, like us, a fire needs to feed on oxygen to grow, but it also needs a substance to sustain itself. To root itself. This is the called the 'fuel'. You can almost say that it is relative to the food that we eat. The last thing a fire needs is heat. Fire is the epitome of heat, but it also needs it to be born. When all of these factors align themselves, it causes the atoms in the fuel to heat up and move at astronomical speeds. With the speed that they vibrate, they break their bonds and emerge as volatile gases. These hyper-vibrating atoms in their gaseous state is what makes fire, fire." After Grandpa finished, the child looked utterly devastated. The grandfather saw his grandson on the verge of tears. "What's the matter Vincent! Why are you crying?!" he said with great alarm.
Vincent wiped his eyes and wiped his snot on his sleeves. He sniffled as he spoke, "I... tried so hard… but I couldn't understand what you said at the end!" He paused for a second before he continued, "I think I'm stupid, Grandpa! I don't think I can keep up with the rest of the world!"
The old man looked at his grandson. Then, he burst out into laughter. 'My two-year-old grandson is worried about being stupid! How could this get any better?!' When Vincent looked at his grandfather laughing at him, he curled his hand into a fist and punched him as hard as he could. The old man felt a soft thud on his chest. He looked down and found Vincent staring back up at him with furrowed eyebrows. 'Aww, he's angry.' The old man was very amused.
"That's not nice Grandpa! What if I actually end up useless?"
"Don't worry my dear child," the old man said with a soothing voice, "you won't ever end up useless or alone. You've got Grandpa with you!" He smiled, "Also, you're two years old; you can't be stupid at your age." Vincent calmed down and his head fell on his grandpa's chest. He could hear the old man's heart beating in a consistent rhythm. He lazily put his thumb in his mouth and tried to steady his droopy eyes. But, alas, his eyelid fluttered for a couple more seconds before closing for good. As he drifted into sleep, the old man rocked his body back and forth. He felt a small bundle of warmth laying on his lap. He could feel the breathing, the heart beating, and the mouth sucking on his own thumb.
The old man looked back into the fire's luminous glow. "Now what am I to do with all that fish?"