Guardians of Ga'Hoole 09 - The First Collier

well.
    Since forest fires were hard to come by in the N’yrthghar, I returned to the ice beds in a far corner of the Hrath’ghar glacier. It was spring once more, and the strength of the sun would be gaining every day through summer, which, though very short, was a radiant time of year. For the ice of the glacier never melted, and those reflections that had first ambushed me in a confusing crossfire of bouncing light when I was learning to fly did bear some resemblance to flames. I thought that they might help me delve deeper into my visions, this “magic” of seeing the present and, perhaps, the future and the past.
    For me, it was a most wonderful spring and summer. Flying to that corner of the glacier was great fun as well. The katabats, those special winds of the N’yrthghar, were wonderfully boisterous that spring. I would sometimes go out of my way to ride the thermal drafts of the smee holes, those steam vents far to the east of the glacier nearthe Bay of Fangs, which offered a bouncing good flight. And the tiny beautiful flowers that dared to bloom at the edge of the avalanche and on the icy rim of the glacier delighted me. Their blossoms made gay the white and ice-bound world of the N’yrthghar. During those long, nearly nightless days of summer, illuminated by the tireless sun, I would immerse myself in the reflections bouncing off this dazzling whiteness. I wandered through radiant forests made of light shards and reflected beams; I found the bright shadows of all manner of creatures and friends, and the fleeting images of events, both past and future. I came to understand my visions more fully. For one thing, I understood that this was not a phenomenon that I could simply will to happen. The visions rarely came on demand. They came as they pleased and, perhaps, as I might best learn from them. But still they were not fire. They were not flame. They were merely shards of reflected light—never as clear and crisp as the images I had seen in the forest fire.
    I began to think deeply about fire, and then one day, dancing in the sharp edges of that fractured light, I had a most intriguing vision—a patch of frost moss that appeared to smolder. Buried at its very center was a tiny glowing spark. I began to blow on it, which I quickly realized was ridiculous as it was only a vision and had nosubstance. But visions can be transformed into reality. I immediately flew out and gathered some of this frost moss and placed it on a pile of clear ice. I then found some pieces of loose ice and propped them up around the moss, in much the same manner as an ice nest is built, save for one difference: The pieces of ice faced the sun in such a way as to focus its rays on the moss. In essence, I had built a reflection chamber. It did not take long. Soon the patch of silvery-green moss was turning darker and then that scent that I had not smelled since the forest fire began to swirl through the air. I saw a spark of orange. My gizzard leaped! And then a flame. A true flame! I had made fire! The ice pieces were now melting and I quickly flung them away so that the water would not extinguish the tiny quivering flames that were just beginning.
    Quite soon, I became adept at making these “moss fires,” as I called them, and within the flames I found many visions, images that were far clearer and livelier than the ones borne by the sun’s reflections. Thus, as I grew older, my visions enabled me to trespass the borders of time and fly into what I can only describe as another world, one that was not constrained by the movement of the sun across the sky, nor the phases of the moon. When I was experiencing visions, I was truly in a timeless universe.
    But was this magic? I was not sure. There seemed to me to be a logic to the way this fire had ignited that was not at all magical. Yes, I did have powers of vision, but making fire from ice had been more the work of my gizzard and my brain than anything else. I felt I had discovered a connection not with magic but with certain laws of the natural world. In truth, I was relieved. I liked the notion of laws, for our N’yrthghar was a lawless place. I began to think that laws were in some way like trees, and without laws the winds swept through the N’yrthghar so fiercely that no owl could fly a true course. But it would be a very long time from these first moss fires until I would go to Beyond the Beyond to further my studies of fire.
    Dear Owl, if, indeed, you are reading