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Joel sat in his fountain and he thought. It was quite wet and not very comfortable. It was extinguishing, or it would be if he was ever on fire. He wasn't. He didn't like fire all that much, but he couldn't think of anyone who did.
Fire burnt. He could feel it ghost over his fingertips and he heard it crackle in his ears. Still, there was none. He slouched deeper into the fountain until just the top of his head poked out of the water. He huffed and watched the air ripple across the surface.
He didn't have time to think about fire. He was doing other super-cool things like- like being Joel, god of- something. Lightning, maybe. Floating islands. The skies. Not fire.
He wouldn't mind being the god of fire. He could burn his enemies, if he had any. The only person that even attempted the name of enemy was Jimmy, and Jimmy built with dynamite and lived in a basin that could flood at any convenient second. He would be a greater enemy if he didn't remind Joel so much of a little toy cowboy.
So Joel didn't have any enemies to burn, and he didn't have any reason to think of fire in the first place, but he was thinking about it anyway. As a god, he didn't need puny mortal things like sleep, but when he shut his eyes he saw images of flaming homes and scorched hands, felt the sting of burning skin, the cool weight of flint in one hand and steel in the other.
He wanted to burn.
Gods couldn't die, but that wasn't the point. He didn't feel like dying, and he didn't feel like hurting. He just wanted to burn. His hands were underwater, but they still tingled in a weird phantom memory.
He didn't believe in past lives or anything like that. He wasn't superstitious like his neighbor. Really, the memories must have been from thousands of years ago, so far away they just felt like a past life. He must have had a rather crappy beginning then, if all he felt was fire.
He sat up in his fountain and watched the water run off his arms when he lifted them. It was like he was oil, like he was never wet in the first place, like he wasn't sitting in a fountain. As dry as good firewood. He climbed out. When he passed the edge of the island, he looked over for just a second, down at the pond below.
Maybe he'd build a boat today. He didn't need one, because he could fly and because there was nowhere for it to sail to, but he could build one. This one surely wouldn't burn, not under his eyes. Except there was no fire. And there was no boat. And there was nowhere for it to go anyway.
He'd say it was painfully familiar if there was anything to be familiar with in the first place. Oh well.