“What are you doing, Silver?”
He startled awake.
Silver’s hands had previously been poised in the air, his legs crossed, and his back straight. His mind had been a black pool of nothingness as he’d cleared its waters, breathing deeply in 6-second intervals. He must’ve gone wrong somewhere, however, as now he was leaning against a wall, legs sprawled out in front of him and hands clutching his sides.
“Oh dear,” he mumbled, pushing himself up with an unsteady hand behind him. “I must’ve dozed off while I was meditating.”
Balloon— yes, his appearance began to become clearer in his foggy vision— chuckled a little, covering his mouth with his hand. “You? Meditate?”
Silver scoffed, dusting himself off as he rose. “Is that so hard to believe? I happen to do it quite frequently, thank you.”
Balloon laughed some more, stepping back while Silver wobbled under his own weight. “Well? What is it that you meditate about, Silver? Some kind of evil scheme to win the game?” He said it in a joking manner, wiggling his fingers like a real villain, but Silver only pursed his lips, looking away from his fellow contestant with a frown.
His meditation wasn’t exactly the type he knew Candle indulged in. Silver tried his hardest to clear his mind— he really did— a clear, blank mind, just as she’d instructed. He imagined his thoughts; floating bubbles, sizzling at the bottom of a pool. When a thought tried to escape, he’d reel it back in, and resume his state of peace. At least, his first time doing it had been something like that. That was back when he had Candle to guide him: when they’d first betrayed the Thinkers together. That had been the only time he’d meditated to her voice. Now, he was by his lonesome, and his sessions tended to go a lot differently. Less peaceful sizzling and more bubbling, raging bursts of lava that seeped through ragged cracks and strained the interior of his head. It was exhausting. Of course he’d fallen asleep.
“Aha, Silver?” Balloon said. He snapped back to, looking down at his salmon-colored friend.
“Right. Nothing in particular, dear. Just needed to clear my head.” He lied.
Balloon nodded almost knowingly, holding a hand to his chin. “Right, right. You must be nervous about the final competition, too. Don’t worry, Silver! I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he grabbed the spoon by the arm, pulling him down to his level. “Cabby and I are freaking out! That makes three of us!”
“Haha,” Silver laughed weakly. “Yes, three of us.” He hated to give Balloon any kind of notion that he was at all worried for tomorrow. He wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. Silver coughed into his fist, straightening out his posture and giving a quiet, “ohohoho!” to clear the air of his anxiety.
“Well, we mustn’t worry too much! Frowning causes wrinkles, as they say.” He laughed some more, even though nothing was funny. “Why don’t you run along now, Balloon? I’ll meet you in our cabin in a few, hmm? Get your beauty rest.”
Balloon looked at him a little funny, raising an eyebrow at his sudden change in demeanor, but eventually the finalist shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Once he was out of ear shot, Silver Spoon let go of the breath he’d been holding in, clutching at his chest. Goodness. He wasn’t even sure of just how Balloon had wandered this far out. He’d tried to pick as secluded a spot as he could.
Silver walked back to the spot he’d fallen asleep in and sat down, crossing his legs and resuming his position of arms held straight in the air, supported by his knees. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, then out.
There wouldn’t be any sleeping until he’d mastered this power. Just as one spends weeks laboriously training a horse to heed their commands, he’d been wrangling across piping-hot lava lakes and sputtering pits of steam with his pesky inner flame. It danced across certain death in a mischievous sequence that coaxed him to fall in; nagged at him for his persistence, and yet he felt as though he could detect the slightest bit of intrigue from it every time his frantically waving arms brought him away from the edge and back to solid ground. Sometimes, he felt like the flame was training him rather than the other way around. Tonight, though, he was eager to win.
A bead of condensation broke the surface of his silver as he clenched his eyes shut tighter, breathing deeper. His position, which Candle had instructed to be strict and straight, was cracking at the seams. Arms and legs twitching, expression faltering into one of effort, leaning forward as though to stagger from the weight of his racing mind.
“A stream,” Candle had said. He’d peaked an eye open to look at her when she said it. Watched the way her body stayed still, and her face stayed controlled. Ethereal. Silver had shuddered, closing his eye once more. “You should be calm like the water of a brook. Purposeful with your thoughts and the way you subdue them.”
Purposeful. Right. That didn’t make any sense to him, but he let it fester in his mind. Purposeful, purposeful, purposeful.
It was as though she had read his thoughts. “Ease up, Silver,” she had said with a laugh. “Don’t think too hard about what I say. Just relax.”
Relax.
He exhaled. She was right. It was peaceful.
He shrieked inside his own head, flailing backward as a burst of lava exploded from an abrasion in the hard rock’s surface. The flame giggled, dashing away from him between sharp stones that jutted up from the ground. Silver growled, almost animalistic in his pursuit as he leapt back to his feet to chase it further.
“We both want the same thing!” He shouted to it as he ran, hitching a breath as his foot nearly slipped into a flowing bit of lava. “You told me so yourself, wretched flame!”
But what was it that Silver wanted? His inner flame seemed well aware, but Silver wasn’t quite sure. Well, he at least knew one thing. He wanted his pesky flame to quite running away!
“You’re mine!” He continued with a huff, scrambling over a larger boulder that bridged two surfaces of rock to each other, in between them being yet another raging pit of lava. It stopped to watch him as he lumbered over— which was hard to tell, since it was just a lick of golden-fire amongst a sea of red, orange, yellow. It burned his eyes to look at just as everything else around him did, but he wouldn’t lose it even for a second. All very amusing to it, he was sure, as it flickered a few times in what his learned and experienced mind could identify as a laugh. It then wriggled away once more.
“When you meditate, Silver, you submit yourself to your mind. You are not its ruler, nor do you hold any power over what goes in and out of it.” Candle had explained.
“That’s preposterous,” he allowed himself to mutter, breaking his silence. She laughed, softly, and his heart fluttered evermore.
“Think of yourself as a Shepherd. They don’t beat their sheep into submission, Silver. They guide them at the head of the flock. The sheep follow because they trust them. Do you understand?”
No, Silver thought, but, “Yes,” he whispered.
His anger wavered for a moment as he watched the golden flame disappear from view, just as he said he wouldn’t allow it. To gain someone’s trust was simple enough for him. He could wrap anyone around his finger with the correct use of clever words and soothing lies. It was what he did best. His inner flame felt different, though. It saw through anything he said, or thought, taunted him for all his fibs, babied him when he let his exterior slip for even a moment and revealed some part of himself that he’d wanted to keep hidden. It knew things about him that Silver barely seemed to know. There was no manipulation of any sort that could get that foolish flame to listen.
Silver Spoon looked down from the boulder he continued to cling to. The popping bubbles of hot lava and the singed black obsidian. Albeit figments of his mind, they felt real. He’d avoided them all this time with flailing arms and terrified shrieks, desperate to get over them all as though they were pesky obstacles his flame had concocted just to mess with him.
But as he stared into the lava further— squinting, a little, as it burned his eyes— he felt as though some kind of revelation hit him steadfast in the heart, nearly knocking him from his perch.
Move with purpose. Candle’s words finally making sense to him made his heart flutter. Of course!
“Oh, Candle, dear!” He smiled, surveying the area around him as his legs twitched to move. “To think you also had to face a volcano to unlock your hidden power.”
And so Silver hopped across his boulder, feet landing on hard, gritty ground, and his movements changed. He wasn’t a battering ram or a boulder of his own that struck every obstacle in his path. Rather, he was a lick of the lava himself; a flowing dollop of red-hot goop that followed the path laid out for it by the Earth. Despite this being his mind, he extinguished his desire to subdue the mountain he found himself and his flame trapped on. Right now, he was just another speck of earth. He moved as the world intended him to, down the path his flame had taken.
“It’s alright if you don’t get it immediately, Silver.” Candle had laughed.
“I—I get it,” he said with a grumble. “I just don’t understand the point of it, is all. Thinking about nothing for an hour just seems like a waste of time.”
She hummed to herself, placing a hand on her chin. “You’ll understand with time, Silver.”
Candle had been spreading her philosophy around their little island like wildfire. Everyone had gotten a taste of her wisdom, a token of her brilliance. She’d held her hands beneath their arms with kind words and reassuring smiles as though they were all just children in need of guidance. Silver, however, felt like he’d been thrown in the deep end. Like he was her last child who she didn’t have to stress over as much. Because that was their last meditation session before she’d left, although the heavens knew he’d tried to get one out of her a few times after that.
At some point— he feigned ignorance as to when, but really, he knew good and well it was after Candle’s elimination— he’d settled down far away from the camp to recollect his thoughts. Her salt rock and utensil lay trustily by his side, and eventually, Silver had found himself poised in the same position he so often found her in.
It had been fine at first. Just like the first time he’d done it, although with a bit more trouble. Eventually, his mind had cleared, and the same peacefulness he felt back then had resumed. It was short lived, though. A small flicker of light surfaced in the otherwise blank, bubbling interface of his head. He’d tried to reel it in, to let it sizzle at the bottom with the rest of his thoughts, but this one was persistent. It danced around his line, taunted him from afar. Silver soon found his composure lost as he grinded his teeth in annoyance. What was wrong with this thought? Why wouldn’t it listen to him like all the others?
He understood, now. And he hollered it to his flame, wherever it may be. “I get it!” His shout was inaudible over the sound of lava and wind, but he shouted anyway. “I finally do! Please, can’t we just talk like civilized gentlemen?”
A small sliver of fire peaked from around a rock at that. His inner flame, in all of its golden brilliance. Silver swallowed. He kept his eyes locked on it as he moved forward, steps purposeful and steady. It was his mind, he reminded himself. His mind. He knew the volcano, had run its course a thousand times. His flame seldom trusted him, but he at least trusted himself to not fall.
“There you are,” he whispered. Even with the howling climate, he could see it flicker and brighten in understanding. “There you are…” He whispered again, as though any other word or proposition would send it running again. Pesky flame. It read his mind, slinking away further. Silver shrieked, waving his hands frantically.
“No, no, no! I didn’t mean it! You aren’t pesky. Just, why don’t we?” He clasped his hands together. “Conduct our business elsewhere? Are you really so content with this…” the words vile, wretched, incorrigible flashed through his mind, but he settled on excluding any descriptor from his sentence, “mountain… as our setting for this?”
The flame dimmed, dancing around as though to look around. It then turned back to him. It was still only a flame, a piece of fire amongst many, but he felt some innate understanding of the way it moved. Like Silver himself could emulate the same dance, if only he tried. His flame slipped off of the rock it was perched upon, traveling slowly down the base of the volcano.
Silver followed with wide, curious eyes as it rode the waves of lava and jumped over obsidian barriers to its flow.
Eventually, it stopped near the base of the mountain, where lapping waves fossilized any lava that dared stray too close. The flame, understanding its fate should it enter, slithered up Silver’s spine. It imbued itself in his metal, warming what had otherwise been his rigid, cold exterior and only protection from the volcano’s heat. He shuddered, looking out over the water.
He felt less like the Shepherd and more like a sheep, blindly listening to what a silly ball of fire wanted him to do. Nevertheless, Silver grit his teeth and clenched his fists.
“I trust you.” He said it with a slight waiver in his voice. He rarely trusted anybody.
When Candle had extended a hand to him, it had felt like a light in the dark. Nobody had ever attempted to understand him before. All of his relationships, especially on the show, were facades; cheap, plastic constructs of friendship that he could pick up and play with like dolls, and throw away just the same. He felt no value in them, no substance in the way he or others felt. But Candle was different. She saw past his hard exterior just like his inner flame did. After she’d left, he’d felt worthless. Like his silver outside was as fake as the rest of him. Like he was nothing… of no value or purpose now that she was gone. It wasn’t until he’d found his flame that he thought maybe, just maybe, there was some part of him worthy of garnering reciprocation from Candle.
And so he held his breath as he took a step into the water, though instantly shouted and pulled his foot back out. “It’s freezing!” He complained. Surely a downside of his soul being alight with gold, he was sure. Silver persisted, however, straining as he stepped back into the cold, black water with a shudder.
He could feel the flame dancing within him, trying its hardest to warm him up. It worked, to an extent. When he looked at his hands, they emanated a faint glow and warmth. Slowly, his descent became comfortable. Purposeful. Another shiver, and then his head was under the water.
His swim carried him deeper, and deeper. His muscles were invigorated by the presence of his flame, who seemed to constantly be brimming with an overflow of strength and power that made him indescribably happy whenever he felt it.
Further descent into the water would soon prove a familiar scene that Silver hadn’t been expecting. Large, gaping ocean vents below them spewed hot, bubbling water. Above them and in all other subsequent directions was nothing. A black void. Was his mind this small?
I don’t understand, Silver thought. He thought he had, when Candle had guided him his first time, but this all felt beyond him. Like he was merely a small piece in a puzzle he couldn’t even begin to see in its entirety. His flame slipped out from beneath his metal into the warm water— perhaps the heat here was more to its liking— and instead took to floating in front of him. Silver nearly reached forward an arm as though to beg it back for its strength, but he kept his distance.
And so there the two were. Staring, waiting.
Silver thought back to Balloon earlier that night. For how long had he been playing this game of dance with his inner flame? Would his fellow contestant be back, soon, or had he fallen asleep waiting? Silver himself felt asleep, but he knew he was very much awake, and that he’d suffer the anguish of such a long night come the finale in the morning.
Never mind that, though. He continued to stare at the golden flame before him, holding onto what felt like an infinite bubble of breath. What did it want? This couldn’t be just another scheme?
It watched him with a curiosity that felt both intimate and invasive, like it was picking apart his insides just by looking at him.
You’re just like Candle, he thought with a frown. You’ve thrown me in the deep end with no direction. What could possibly be the point of this?
Suddenly, the ocean vents beneath him croaked and groaned. He look down with a startle, immediately letting go of his breath. The bubbles, once calm representations of all of his thoughts, had begun to rise. They rose, rose, rose— and rose fast. When Silver looked up, his flame was gone, escaping back inside the safety of his hard metal while Silver could only look downward with panic. He’d been avoiding the lava for days due to some paranoid thought that it might be real after all. What could happen here?!
Swimming proved futile as the bubbles shot upward, propelling him up, up, up and to the top of the vast ocean. His skin glowed gold, his mind was racing, and he clenched his eyes shut to shield from the impact of breaking the water.
“Above all else, you mustn’t lose your way, Silver,” she had said. “If ever the water seems out of control, you open your eyes and try again another day. You are an equal to your thoughts, do you understand?”
He barely understood any of this. An equal to his thoughts? And just how would he know if the waters got out of control, anyway? Candle’s teachings were valuable, but he felt like many of them were tainted by her whimsical fantasies. He nodded to her anyway. “Equal,” he had repeated.
When Silver’s eyes shot open this time— in the waking world, of course— he found that the familiar bases of trees and bushes that he was so often met with after meditating were gone. Rather, the tops of the trees were within his line of sight, now. Silver Spoon gasped, and his gaze shot downward.
Flying.
He was flying! Oh goodness, he’d done it!
Within an instant, he fell back to the ground, clattering sharply against the rock and dirt. The prince scrambled upward, looking around. The sun had begun to poke into the sky. Balloon was asleep, and no one had been around to witness his feat.
“You— but I— and, we flew!” He kicked his legs, unable to contain his joy. “I did it, I did it, I did it! Thank you!”
He wasn’t sure if his flame was listening. It was always a faint, elusive feeling in his chest until it actually showed up. But he gave it his gratitude nonetheless, hugging himself tightly.
For so long, he’d felt second class to Candle. He’d never felt that way with anyone before, always believing that he was above all, but she’d tethered him to the ground. He’d watched on with an indescribable yearning as she floated above him, out of reach and unobtainable. But now? He could fly! He could see it now, propelling himself to her level. Second class no longer! She’d be ecstatic to see how far he’s come, he was sure of it!
He hadn’t followed her advice exactly. Be the Shepherd, she’d preached, but did he really have to be? His inner flame was the one with all the power, after all, and if its conditions for lending that to him was Silver’s loyalty as a simple sheep, he’d do it. His flame knew what he’d wanted— had known it all along, and it had given that to him. Power. Recognition.
He certainly wasn’t faulty silver anymore.