Due to the viciously extreme climate of the Anhydrous desert, there are few who ever willingly enter. Even when the country of smiling skies existed, all the trade routes still chose to go around the dead lake and through the golden country rather than traverse the desert. Not even adventurers were enticed enough by the prospect of untouched artifacts hidden in buried ruins to risk the journey. There was a group that managed to call the Anhydrous desert home. A small tribe whose existence isn’t even known by many.

The roaring star was beating its scorching rays with an unusually high degree of heat on this day. A blaring bonfire rose high in the sky in the center of a small tribal community. The star and bonfire worked together to cook the sand around the bonfire into a thick sheet of glass.

The Phlogiston had built their culture on their absolute control over temperature and were mostly immune to the usual heat of the star; however, on this particular day most of the children and even some of the low ranking members steered clear of the bonfire in hopes of keeping cool. There was one person who did not avoid the bonfire.

This man sat cross-legged in the center of the bonfire clattering his teeth and incessantly rubbing his arms for warmth. The short man had long platinum hair and wore around twenty or so layers of heavy winter coats. His body looked completely bloated as the countless layers of clothing struggled to remain tied close. He wore an innumerable number of mittens and he still bunched his hands into fists and recoiled them into his sleeve for more warmth. He had seven larger cotton hats and wore the twenty or so hoodies of his winter coats on top of those and stacked on top of all those layers delicately balancing on his head was a large cauldron filled with a boiling stew. The man in the fire was focusing all his power to fuel the bonfire and the heat as he let out a continuous stream of deep red flames to bellow out of his body.

In front of the burning man and the bonfire sat on the glass was an elderly man surrounded by a group of distraught children. The children continuously jumped from foot to foot as they tried to reduce the amount of time their bare feet spent touching the scorching glass. Not all the children struggled on the glass, there were a pair of fraternal twins, a boy and girl, who managed to sit down; although, they constantly need to readjust their positioning to avoid having any individual part of their body focus the heat for too long.

The clothes of the tribe could not be any more different than that of the man in the bonfire as they all wore thin light cloths that merely worked to hide their skin from the rays of the star. The elder was totally unfazed by the temperature of the glass or the radical movement of the children as he continued his lesson to the children. “You must rest tranquil on the glass and meditate on the temperature if any of you wish to unlock the power of the Phlogiston’s flame.”

“But it hurts, it’s too hot.” One of the younger boys complained.

The elder carefully stroked his beard while ignoring the moans of the annoyed children and continued with his lecture. “The Phlogiston’s flame thrives through strife. When a phlogiston puts themselves in a position of discomfort and learns to come to accept and make peace with that discomfort is how a phlogiston learns to grow.”

“My mom grounded me from going to the oasis for a whole week, don’t we know enough about strife?”

The elder laughed with such ferocity he fell on his back. “No, you will need to at least be grounded from the oasis for a month to even catch a glimpse of the flame.”

The children let out a ubiquitous groan of displeasure at the impossible obstacle placed before them. One of the children eventually asked the elder. “I could be playing kickball right now. I just showed up for your lesson because I thought I could shoot fire out of my hands like you or Mr. crockpot. I didn’t know there would be training, and why does it have to be so depressing and sad?”

The children resonated this concern harmoniously as many nodded their heads in agreement. The twins did not join in this class mutiny as they silently meditated on the glass using all their will to overcome the overpowering heat.

The elder calmly responded to the child’s question. “The Phlogiston flame is not depressing or sad-“

One of the children quickly butted in. “But you said it was all about strife or whatever.”

“It is about overcoming strife. The phlogiston flame is about overcoming one’s limits and dashing away the shackles of leisure which excuse imperfect action. When we put ourselves in these positions or in this mindset, it is then we can work on improving the core of ourselves and refine the person we desire to become...”

“I don’t know, it sounds like a lot of work when I could just go play kickball.”

“…and you’ll be able to shoot fire out of your hands.”

The children all shouted out in rapturous excitement and made another weak attempt at bearing the glass’s heat. The day continued on and slowly more and more children would give up and move on to other things. On the bright side, there were now enough children to have a full kickball game.

The only people left within the glass perimeter were the elder, the man in the bonfire, a few meditating adults, and the twins. The twins seemed to be having a small competition between themselves to see who could inch closest to the bonfire without having to then run out of the glass to cool down.

“Psst, psst, hey… Mr. Crockpot!” The man inside the bonfire stuck his nose out from under his winter clothes and stared at the little girl in front of him.

He pushed through his constantly spasming muscles to show the girl a great big grin. “Hey Mondo, looks like you made it here first this time.”

Mondo was quickly huffing in and out as she used her hands to slightly elevate her bum off the glass then rested her bum and moved her hands as far from the glass as she could in a practiced rhythm. She gave Mr. Crockpot a gigantic smile and a thumbs up. “Yeah!”

“Are you going for the full prize today?”

“Huff, huff. Yes, yes. I can do it.” Mondo was speaking quickly between winces. Mr. Crockpot raised an eyebrow unconvincingly to the girl but nonetheless he picked up a metal bowl next to him and filled it with the stew from his cauldron. Now that the bowl was ready the girl cupped her two hands to receive the bowl. As she felt a lick of the bonfire flame, she retracted her hands and held them as close as she could to her chest while turning and leaning her head as far back as she could.

Mr. crockpot snickered at the action. “Now come on Mondo, I can’t give you the bowl if you’re hands aren’t past the line.”

Mondo’s brother finally noticed how close she was to the bonfire and quickly began scooting closer while letting out pained oohs and aahs. Mondo turned her head back towards the bonfire but kept her head down as she couldn’t take the heat waves directly emitting on her face. She slowly stretched her arm out which was shaking incessantly.

“I’m going to hand you the bowl now. Are you ready?”

Mondo fought back some small quickly evaporating tears and bit her lip. “mmhmm”

She very slightly nodded her head in a yes gesture. Mr. Crockpot let out a sly smile before slowly moving his arms over hers and slowly descended the bowl. “Okay, here you go.”

He placed the bowl down onto her hands and she immediately retracted her arms away spilling the stew all over the glass. “YEOUCH!!!!!!!!!”

She shouted at the top of her lungs and instantly jumped up into the air and ran out of the glass perimeter in as large steps as she possibly could. The elder and all the adults ruptured into laughter at the expected result.

“What about you Zen, are you going to try the stew today?”

Mondo’s brother Zen stopped his hurried scooting as he watched his sister run away. He turned back to Mr. Crockpot and gave a shy smile. “I think I’ll just try and get used to being this close for now.”

The elder stood up from his meditation and made his way to the bonfire joining Mr. Crockpot inside. The elder picked up the spilled bowl of stew and began scooping up the remaining unspilled food with his hands and eating it. He spoke to Zen as he did this.“Very wise Zen. Divide and conquer, take every challenge one problem and one step at a time. Eventually you will make it here and have a delicious taste of stew, yes?”

“Nope!” Zen swiftly retorted as he rocketed into the air span around and bolted out of the glass perimeter shouting as loudly as his sister had. “YEOUCH!!!!!!!!!”

The elder and Mr. Crockpot broke into laughter refilling their bowls and gulping down. After downing an entire bowl of stew and wiping his long beard of spilled remnants the elder spoke to Mr. Crockpot. “And what about you Hiemal, how is your meditation going?”

Hiemal drank two full bowls of stew but his shivering did not relent. “I don’t know, no matter how hard I try I can’t seem to break into the orange stage. I managed to unlock the red flame just five years after coming to your village, but it has been fifteen years since then and still nothing.”

The elder nodded his head stroking his beard. “You managed to unlock the Phlogiston flame exceptionally quickly as you worked on conquering the strife that sent you to this desert. But as I told the children, the Phlogiston flame is not about strife but overcoming it and moving on. Even now twenty years later you are still holding on to something. Acceptance was but only the first step.

Hiemal’s complexion was wrought with a deep sadness. “But I don’t want to forget and move on.”

The elder grew a wide smirk and wagged his finger at Hiemal. “Ahh but forgetting and moving on are not the same thing. You seem to have it in your mind that if you don’t remember those who were important to you at their worst moment then you have done them some sort of injustice. You think that if you truly embrace yourself into our tribe and openly call us as a new family then you are discarding your old family.”

Hiemal had nothing to respond to the elder, he just continued to shake as he made himself another bowl of stew. The elder shook his head in disappointment. “You have been listening, but you have not been learning. It is not what was destroyed that made your relationships important, it is what was created, so why are you so fixated on the destruction? Why don’t you tell me about the country of smiling skies.”

Hiemal was taken aback slightly by the sudden prodding of the elder. He brought his hand over to his breast pocket and contemplated, thought his outermost jacket didn’t have a breast pocket. “Well it was colder than here.”

“Tell me about before the storm.”

It took Hiemal time for him to rummage through his mind to find what to say. He gave a small smile. “It was still colder than here.”

The two shared a rapturous laugh, the laugh was much more exaggerated than anyone else would of thought that the comment was worth. Hiemal continued on. “I guess since the tribe is so seclusive you probably don’t know the rumors, but it was just as beautiful as everyone said. Every night it was so clear that you could see the whole galaxy, you could go swimming all year round and fly a kite at any time. Oh, kites are these sheets of thin material tied to string that fly in the wind.”

“These kites sound very interesting to watch.”

Hiemal let out a hollow chuckle at the elder’s comments. “They really were, my sister and I used to love going to the yearly kite festival and watch thousands of crazy huge and intricate kites fill the sky. There was this one time that my sister wanted to see this one dragon kite up close, so we snuck into the engineering tent. We ended up accidentally snapping the string and the kite flew wildly in the air for an hour before it came crashing down and landed right on my sister. I guess you could say that was karma.”

“You seem to be really close with your sister.”

“I actually have five, but I was particularly close with Gascon.”

The elder burst into a fit of laughter while slapping Hiemal’s back. “Yes, yes exactly! You HAVE five sisters. You see, fire is very destructive. People tend to think that way, but fire created this glass before us, and it helped create this stew for us, as well as the light that fills our homes. The worst mistake a practitioner of the Phlogiston’s flame is to think that destruction negates creation and that the two are separate. I’m going to make an assumption now and say that your sister Gascon is dead. But that destruction did not negate the creation of Gascon. She is still your sister and always will be. The red flame was you accepting what was lost, the orange flame will be you accepting what can be found.”

The elder stood up and arched his back letting out an uncomfortable number of cracks. “Now I’m going to join those two twins at the oasis to cool down. I have no idea how you can constantly handle all of this heat.”

The elder then tilted his head to either side cracking his neck. He took a final scoop of the stew and massaged his throat. “YEOUCH!!!!!!!!!” The elder shouted at the top of his lungs as he ran away from the bonfire and its glass perimeter as quickly as he possibly could.

Hiemal was different than the locals, while they worked on mastering temperature itself and overcoming the cold and heat, Hiemal only wanted to overcome the cold. He hardly ever left the bonfire unless it was to help the village in some sort of emergency or building effort and even then, he would usually bring the bonfire with him.

Hiemal meditated in the bonfire while thinking about what the elder had said. He thought about what it meant to accept what can be found. His contemplation was interrupted by the sudden chime of a bell.

Directly in front of Hiemal there was what seemed to be a small pink rhombus that grew out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The pink organism’s single arm was outstretched toward Hiemal holding on to a glowing parchment.

As soon as the parchment was exposed to the ludicrous heat of the area it burst into flames and disintegrated. The pink organism once again began to morph and transform continuously changing shape until finally it was just a rhombus that simply shrunk out of existence. Then Hiemal heard the sudden chime of a bell.

In front of Hiemal a little way away just outside of the glass perimeter there was what seemed to be a small pink rhombus that grew out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The pink organism’s single arm was outstretched toward Hiemal holding on to a glowing parchment.

For the first time in three months Hiemal stood up and left the bonfire. He walked over to the pink organism. Hiemal took the glowing parchment and read it.

You have been invited to The Tournament You are The Hyperborean