Fire Never Extinguished

Our separate families were drawn from a winter storm to share one remaining cabin.  
 
We sat quietly by the hearth as our parents laughed and and drank wine, eventually finding their ways to warm bedrooms.  

“Don’t’ stay up too late,” my father called out.    

“OK," I said. "I've got the couch."

In a few minutes we heard the soft murmurs of affection through the cabin walls and you laughed to think your parents might be making love. We were thankful for the fire, and the puzzling warmth left unattended between us.

Our words and laughter rose, then faded, replaced by what I later recognized as the silence of forest animals.

Next to that cabin fire, did we see each other as human or merely animals seeking warmth? I think I saw you as both, but I'm not sure how you saw me. There wasn't time to contemplate such questions. We knew the fire was our source of life and that death would have been beyond those cabin walls. The rhythmic slurping sounds of our joined flesh confirmed us as animals, conscious of nothing but that present moment.

As our parents warmed in their marriage beds, their children burned together in a fire that would never be consumed or extinguished.