Logi's Lesson: Burning
Meeting Logi
This was a very short lesson. We
had lit a fire on the winter solstice, and after other folk left the field, I
was set to watch it. The moment I was alone, he was there, sitting in the fire.
Skinny, bony joints, bony pointed face, long gnarly fingers that flicked out at
me. His hair was a snapping, sparking halo about his narrow shoulders. "Get your drum," he ordered. When I played, he told me "Faster,"
and then "Faster!" again. When I was drumming at the absolute
limit of my concentration, he laughed, tapping his fingers in time on the
fire-logs, and spoke to me. After he was done, he vanished, and he took the
fire with him entirely. I have never seen a bonfire shrink to dead smoking
coals in less than three minutes before this.
Logi's Lesson: Fire eats things. Of course you know that, but when people talk about inner fire, what do they really mean? Or - to put it differently - what ought they to mean? I'll bet you're thinking about anger, or pride, or any of those things. Sorry, all wrong. Your inner fire is your metabolism. It's what burns your fuel. And what I'm going to do is to give you two rhythms, and two songs, to work with that. One will speed metabolism up, if repeated over a long period of time; one will slow it down. Why bother with this? Because you might need it. You might need to get something bad out of your system, or put on more muscle; you might want to conserve food during a stint in the cold. You have no idea what kind of things will be asked of you, what kind of circumstances and how long they might go on! Some things are good to be able to tweak. Mind you, this won't change anything strongly; only subtly. It won't give someone a hummingbird metabolism if they're a complete slug, or vice versa - but it will help, a little, over a period of time. Even once will help a bit. All right, I'm done; it's too cold here for me. Hah!
Logi's
Songs:
Haste now to the fireside,
Haste now to burn bright,
Come now devouring,
Each grain a-scouring,
Bowl and spoon and all.
Bank all the coals yet,
Orange as sunset,
For winter we keep you,
With ashes we sleep you,
Hoarded like dragon's gold.