Mastering Fire & Emotional Equilibrium
Two Short Stories
Mastering Fire
The professor held a candle before the class. With a sharp efficiency she lit it, and everyone watched the diminutive flame bend and flicker at the mercy of the room’s currents. Then the professor uttered a few words, lay the candle down on the floor, and raised her arms slowly. In a few blinks the classroom was engulfed in flames. Tongues of fire lashed against the walls. Waves of conflagration roiled across the carpet. Fiery clouds billowed across the ceiling. The blaze roared and pulsed with heat. No one moved a muscle. Pens poised, they watched to see what the professor would do.
What the professor did was close her eyes. A smile spread across her lips until it was a large grin, her teeth sparkling in the fire’s light. Then she brought her hands together and whispered a word, extinguish. That whispered word became a forceful gust of wind and just like that the flames were transformed into smoke and made a hasty retreat through an open window. The only remnant of the inferno was the candle — still on the floor — still tentatively burning — and which the professor picked up and extinguished casually. The most observant pupils noted that the wick had been restored so that it looked like a candle that had never burned.
