Diasel shivered in the cold moonless night. Perched on the window seal of her small cabin, Diasel watched the bull sized man strut through the small rooms. He was still bundled up in his black vest and thick plaid wool jacket he had worn throughout the harsh winter day.
Diasel had spent the day following him to the edge of the clearing around the house to the start of the forest and back again as he made several trips for firewood. The large muscled man always carried two axes with him. The smallest of the two dangled in a leather sling at his waist while he hefted larger one over his shoulder. He used the smaller axe to make quick work of the smaller limbs, slicing them off the tree he had chopped down the day before.
Once an area was clear of limbs he would lay them out in small bundles and then lash them together with a length of tattered rope creating a makeshift platform. After creating the small platform he labored at chopping the trunk of the tree into a movable portion. He then hefted the hunk of wood on to the platform and secured it with the tail end of the rope and proceeded to haul his makeshift sled back to the cabin.
All the while Diasel watched with interest and intrigue. This man was the reason she was alive. If he had not stumbled across her when he did, she would surely have died from her injury. The first few weeks of her recovery Diasel had been apprehensive about the man who called himself Jauke but she had come to enjoy his silent company. She was grateful for the silence because she was a faerie and in her realm disclosure of faerie knowledge to humans was punished by death. Not her death, but the death of the human. Diasel could not let Jauke die for saving her life.
Jauke entered the living room bare of vest and jacket. Diasel smiled and stood from her perch at the window seal. Her skin was slick with beads of perspiration. Some of those tiny drops of sweat had already began freezing while still on her skin. She shivered more fiercely as the heat leaked from her body. She was a fire fairy which meant without heat, she would die.
Diasel’s smile widened as she watched Jauke go about starting a fire in the stone fireplace. The flames started small but quickly grew letting off more and more heat. As she grew close to the fire the beads of sweat melted and turned into steam. The heat caressed her skin like rays of sunshine. She dropped her head back and reached her palms out to the orange flames. Warmth and pleasure flooded her veins. Her skin flushed a light pink and as she continued to soak in the heat of the fire her complexion sparkled with tiny specks of orange-red embers.
Mile 29 