Hello again! Today was lots of fun!

Lena started it. Again with a simple question.

"Hey, big bro?" She asked looking at me cutely. "How hot can you get your flames?"

Now, that was a very good question. I know this because it prompted Onica to flinch.

We had to move to a 'relatively destructible place' as Onica put it. Away from the roads and far from the nearest large burnable patch of forest and grass. I was all for burning the road but I do hate to see a grown cat-lady cry. So we set out looking for a place that I could burn. Lots of rocks and sand were preferrable. Some water nearby so Lena could fight any spreading flames should it prove neccessary.

So we finally decided on a large but mostly barren hill in the middle of a swamp. A few mountain streams flowing into the area had had long ago flooded a large section of rare flat land among the hills ad mountains into a muddy morass that sucked hungrily at your feet. The thought was that if this whole place burned it would just get re-flooded shortly after anyway, and in the interim nobody would miss it but the frogs and insects.

There were lots of frogs and insects too. The whole place was full of croaking, ribbiting, squacking, chirping, chirrring, and occasional roaring. Mostly from me at all the bloodsucking insects that called this place home.

Plopped ignomiously in the middle of this mess was the squat hill we, or rather Julius and I, would be using as an testing ground. It had plenty of long dead trees on it, and some moulding leaf litter. Perfect for burning. Julius and I headed to the top while the others watched from a hill on the far edge of the swamps.

Once Julius and I got to the top of the hill I gave him a thumbs up and started the experiment. I have noticed I seem to make hotter flames when I am under the influence of strong emotions. So for starters I tried being as calm as I can be. I focused on just heating my body. Not creating flames or throwing them about.

I gathered all the tingles in me to the pit of my stomach. I compressed them as much as I could and started moving them about as wildly and quickly as possible in a slowly shrinking sphere inside of me. I had my eyes shut to concentrate, but I could feel my body and the air around me getting hotter. As the sphere of wild tingles inside me continued to shrink it took more and more effort to compress it further. Finally I felt like I had reached some kind of threshold. If I went further something great would happen, but I found that last step more difficult to take than all the previous ones put together.

As frustration and anoyance filtered into my conciousness they seemed to get sucked into the squirming energies inside me. The sphere pulsed and I nearly lost control of it. Intuitively I knew that if I released the sphere as it was it woud give off a great blast of heat and fire all around me. But I wanted to see my limits, and I still had further I could go.

So determination also slipped into the sphere, and it stabilzed. It slowly began compressing again. Excitement and triumph slipped inside and I nearly lost control again. By this time the sphere which had been bigger than my head at the start was only the size of my fingertip.

Slowly it crumpled closer and closer to nothing. The air around me was shifting and swirling as it rode the heat I was giving off up into the sky.

Finally the last little spark condensed into a pure red mote of light inside me, and slowly, like a seed after a long winter it began to sprout. From its center delicate waving strands of golden energy stretched outwards. A full dozen hair thin strands reached out to me from the speck in my center. The tingles inside them was surprisingly tame, but all the same it had a clear destination.

My bones, or rather, the center of my bones. My arms, legs, ribs, spine, and skull all had these strands gently dig inside of them. Slow pulses ran from the red speck inside me through the strands, and into my bones. I could feel heat building inside the affected bones. Golden strands, even finer than the previous ones left the affected bones. Most sought out and fed those same pulses to more untouched bones, but once all my bones were being fed with pure heat a few started diving into my veins.

More and more, finer and finer, hotter and hotter. Soon my entire being was golden energy all originating from a single crimson dot in the pit of my stomach.

That is when I opened my eyes.

All was fire.

Winds blasted towards me, only to be caught in an uwpard spiralling column of heat and fire. I had sunk a good three feet into the earth until it had melted into dense enough glass to hold me. The hill was slowly melting away. A good chunk of the swamp had been consumed. As I watched gouts of steam rushed up and were carried by ravenous winds towards me, and then ushered upwards into a towering cloud overhead. The swamp grasses wilted and bowed a good ten feet from the fire, and shortly after went up into flames themselves.

I gazed at the burning world for a short while before I snapped out of my surprise. As I released my concentration I was surprised to feel the strands and core remain. Dimmed but definitely there. Where before my tingles had to work their way through my body like explorers through a jungle, now they zipped and sped through me with merely a thought. I kept accidentally bursting into flames.

It's kind of embarrassing.

I wonder if it works this way with others? Because if Julius, Lena, and Fen can do the same, won't we get a huge boost in power? Is that even desirable? My new tingles move almost faster than I can think. Meaning that if I am not careful a stray thought could send a blast of super-heated fire into a mild annoyances face. It takes far more control and focus to not burn things now. Before I had to try to burn things, now I have to try not to burn things. I wonder which is harder?

Eh, why not? I'll tell and show them what happened and let them decide for themselves if they want to try. Fen doesn't even have bones so I don't know what to tell him.

As I pulled my feet from the molten earth with a *sploch* and *sizzle* I saw Julius looking at me with fervent eyes. I guess I know one fella who would be interested.

I was pretty exhausted, but I still managed to meet up with Lena and the others before a black rain started falling from the new clouds I had made. They were so dense they blocked out the sun nearly completely. I had to use a torch finger to find my way back through the much quieter remains of the swamp.

We made a shelter shaped like a coiled up snake as Lena requested and sat under it, watching the black ashen rain fall under an unnaturally early night. Onica was sending aggrieved glances alternately between me and the sky.

Must be careful, cannot burn Onica.

I made meat and veggie skewers for dinner.

Goodnight.