The first time I did this was fun, so let’s try it again. I’ve got less than forty minutes to write this story, start to finish, before I have to go to work. And, go!
* * *
The sound of the fires of the storm, the sound of the winds and the fires of the storm, surges and sighs in its familiar rhythm as I stride across the village square. I am a sun, and the fires circle me, small blazing planets each one of them. I have not been to this village before, but villages are all the same. They all know how to burn.
They have mostly gone, these people, fled to other places as they mostly do. Only a few screams remain and these are distant, receding on my periphery. Villages are all the same. I would stop if I could the fury of the fires, the way they wash away markets and homes, recede, and then like the tides surge back again in the pull of my gravities.
I would stop if I could. The fires obey me. But I obey another, and his gravities tug me to his orbit, and I have my storms and he has me. And the villages, they burn.
They are all the same. But not this one.
The opposite of fire is not ice nor water nor earth nor wind nor leaf but dark, and the deeping dark grows silently in the village square, not surging or sighing but only existing, being the absence of the light of the fires of the storm. The dark like the fire has its masters and orbits, and I know that tonight is the night I will die.
They call them shadows, these creatures that eat the fire, but they are wrong. A shadow is what appears when you stand before a fire.
When a fire goes out there is only dark.
I smile and sigh and make myself ready at the heart of the winds and the fires of the storm.
Brian D. Buckley 
I really like the imagery here. I’ve always been more of a straight story teller, maybe a symptom of my science fiction influences, but there’s always been a poetry to your work that I appreciate. Knowing of course the time constraints, the only thing I was left wanting for was where the dark was coming from, and maybe a little more about the sun’s master. Really fun to read these though, keep doing them!
Thanks Ben! I’ll do my best.
Fun to read a little new material! hooray! (Especially now that I’ve completely depleted my stash of blooks. Currently I’m looking for a substitute, but I haven’t found anything except for this block and season 1 of Chuck.) Thanks for posting another short story. I like the bit near the end about fire and dark, which I found rather interesting. Thanks for posting!
Glad you liked it! Thanks Alex.