Creig – The Bonfire

The paddock fire was taller than the shed, eating half a tree in gulps, roaring like it meant to swallow the sky. Smoke carried gum and resin, sweet and choking at the back of the throat. Laughter cracked louder than burning timber — brash, human defiance pitched against an ancient, hungry blaze. Kids streaked through the dark with sparklers, dogs snapping at shadows. The old men stood circling with stubbies in hand, their voices rising with every coarse joke, every half-true story shouted across the flame.

I kept to the fence line. Always safer at the edge. From there you could watch them all, join in if you wanted — or not.

Not that I couldn’t. If I wanted to, I could out-laugh half the paddock, slice a silence wide open with a line sharp enough to draw blood, then grin until they forgot they’d been cut. Easy. That was the trick. The mask. Trickster, they’d call me. Wolf, if they knew better.

But not tonight.

Because she was here. The new woman Dad had dragged in — and her girl. Quiet as her shadow, half pulled by her mother’s orbit, half outside it.

I’d decided already: I wouldn’t like them. Couldn’t. The house was ours, still my mother’s even if she’d gone. My brothers had taken the easy path, packed off to avoid watching another woman stitch herself into the gap. I couldn’t blame them. Better to leave than stay and see your blood replaced.

So I leaned easy against the post, grin cocked, while Jock and Mick filled the silence with their usual noise.

“Reckon your old man’s done alright,” Mick said, chin jerking toward the women.

“Too right,” Jock smirked. “Not bad lookers either.”

I snorted, shook my head. “Careful, boys. Stare too hard and the smoke’ll blind you.”

The fire bent then, wind dragging its light across the girl’s face. She wasn’t laughing like the rest. She stood just back from the crush of people, close but apart, like she didn’t belong to them. The flames seemed to choose her, pressing their glow against her cheek, a kiss from something older than any of us.

The boys barked, slapped my back, and I laughed with them — loud, careless, wolfish. That was the mask. Always the mask.

But the fire bent its head again.

For one heartbeat her hair flared gold in the light, crowning her face. Not soft, not doe-eyed — intent, solemn, as if she could hear something no one else could.

It struck through me, sharp as an ember landing bare on my skin.

I tore my eyes away, smirk ready, a crack for Jock on my tongue. But the image lingered: her face caught in the blaze, listening to something I couldn’t hear.

Then she moved.

She slipped from her mother’s side, threading between neighbours. Smoke clung to her, curling around her shoulders, veiling her one moment and showing her the next — following her no matter how she shifted, like it couldn’t bear to let her go.

“See?” Jock grinned. “Even the bloody smoke fancies her.”

They laughed, and I laughed with them. Armour on, shoulders loose. That was the game.

But then — she passed us.

The fire caught her from behind, turned her body to silhouette, and when she turned her head the veil broke. Her face came clear: delicate, edged in fire. Her eyes lifted. Hazel, and yet — they should have been green. Green eyes with hair of fiery flame. A girl stolen from a story I half remembered.

Her gaze touched mine. Only for a beat. Not long enough to name. But my chest tightened, and I forgot to breathe for a moment, she was the only thing that existed.

Then WHAM — Jock’s hand slammed my shoulder, shoving me half a step. The spell shattered. The smoke stung. The boys were still laughing, and I shoved him back with a grin sharp enough to hide the stumble. “Careful, mate. Nearly knocked me into the fire.”

That was when the music drifted over and reached my thoughts.

From the car at the paddock gate, static carried a song across the smoke. Wildfire. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now the words pierced through. A girl. A horse. A winter death.

The song and the owl’s cry tangled in my chest, and something rose with it — not English, not anything I’d been taught, but a sound old as the fire itself. Teine. Wild fire. It flickered through me, strange and familiar all at once, as if I’d carried it a long time without knowing.

No one else turned. No one else heard.

But I did.

The song and the owl’s cry twined together, smoke and shadow, ancient and new, until I couldn’t tell which was which. A trickster’s mask was good for many things, but not for this. My skin prickled. My chest burned tight. I shoved my hands deeper in my pockets, smirk locked back into place, pretending. Always pretending.

The fire had kissed it’s light upon her - lit her up. And though I laughed with my mates, though I grinned sharp enough to draw blood, the truth was already lodged beneath my ribs.

Isy – Wildefire

The fire was alive. Taller than the shed, taller than the men who fed it, wild with hunger. Sparks wheeled up and vanished into the stars, as though the blaze meant to seed the sky itself. The air was thick with smoke, gum leaves burning to ash, laughter cracked through the night as timber split. Kids darted like comets with sparklers in their fists, dogs snapping at the light. The men’s voices rose brash and sure, climbing higher with every coarse joke, every half-believed tale.

I stood beside Mum, half inside the circle, half out. She laughed too brightly at the stepfather-to-be, tilting her head, giving him the smile she barely knew how to wear yet. It had been weeks since the midwinter bonfire where they’d met, and now here we were. Moving in, settling, pretending. It made me angry — all of it. This would be my second stepfather. The first one had gambled everything away — even my guitar, even our Ford, the one that took us to the races every weekend. I still hadn’t forgiven that.

I did not smile.

The fire’s heat pressed hard against my skin until I felt scorched. So I stepped back. The smoke followed, curling into my hair, dragging across my face like it wanted me for itself. Wherever I went, it clung. As if the fire meant to claim me.

I slipped away from Mum’s side, just far enough to breathe. But not far enough to escape the weight of this place. A house that wasn’t mine. A life I didn’t want.

That was when I saw him.

At the edge of the crowd. Leaning against a fence post like it belonged to him. Shadows made his shoulders broader. Firelight caught the grin on his mouth, sharp as a blade. Other boys jostled loud around him, but he stood apart. Wolfish. Watching.

Boys were always stupid. Doing stupid things. I missed the racetrack already. I missed the purr of engines rumbling my bones, the heat that caressed my legs when they flew past. The smell of burning rubber, not from tyres thrown on bonfires, but from the ones that smouldered on hot tar. That was the language I understood. This? This was just noise.

Their laughter bent toward me. A joke, a cut I couldn’t hear but felt all the same. His mouth curled around it, easy and careless. But his eyes — his eyes slipped past the mask.

And then the fire bent too. The wind bowed its head and flung the full blaze across me. For a heartbeat it crowned me in gold. And he saw it.

I kept walking, pulse hammering, though I let nothing show. Just one step, then another, until I was level with them. His friends’ laughter roared. But the world had already gone quiet.

I let my head turn. Met his eyes.

Blue. Clear. Ocean-deep.
A wolf startled into stillness.

Then his mate shoved him, hard, nearly toppling him forward. Laughter broke the silence. His grin snapped back in place — his armour. I let my gaze fall, let the firelight swallow me again, and walked past toward the house.

That was when I heard it.

A radio crackling by the gate, carrying a thin song through the smoke. Wildfire. A girl, a horse, a winter death. The words clung like the smoke did, wrapped around me.

And from the trees, the owl answered. A low, mournful call. Old as the dirt under our feet, older than the blaze.

No one else turned. No one else paused.

But I heard it.

Not Wildfire.
Teine Fiadhaich.

The words rose from nowhere, though I had never learned them. Scottish. Old as blood. Older than the loch I’d never seen but knew anyway.

For a breath I saw her — a horse black as winter shadow, mane like smoke, eyes burning like they had known me forever.

Wildefire.

I had always hated Highland dancing. I’d wanted ballet, but they gave me tartan and swords. “She’s a natural,” they said. “Her footwork perfect.” And they were right. I could step blindfolded and never touch a blade. But I hated it. It scared me. The swords weren’t real, but the fire under them was.

Even now I shivered, cheeks still hot with the bonfire’s brand.

The house loomed as I walked up the gravel path. Dark falling, our things dumped in rooms like we were squatters. Not unpacked. Just dropped. The bed was made, but not with my sheets. Theirs. The mattress sagged, stone-hard beneath. I hated it. All of it.

I knelt by the bundle, searching for pyjamas, finding none. My chest tightened. Soft sobs slipped through before I could stop them.

On Monday I’d been at school, the week stretching out ordinary. By Friday we were here.

The old life still clung — the races, the sheds, the farrier’s forge. My step-grandfather’s huge hands coaxing fire into iron, sparks leaping as horseshoes sang red. The smell of horse sweat, of hides slick under my palms, of hooves steady in my hands as he hammered the shoe home.

And Leilani.

A bay mare standing apart, dark fire in her coat, smoke in her mane, her eyes locked on mine as though we had always known one another.

“Hyperion’s in her,” he’d said, thumb running over the shoulder muscle. “See the quarters? The fire in her eye? That’s blood you don’t shoe every day.”

I hadn’t known the name then, but I never forgot it. Hyperion. Like the key to a door I’d never seen but always carried.

I touched her neck and felt it — the power under the skin. Fire ready to shatter the ground if it chose to.

Leilani carried her name to Randwick, to Bart Cummings’ stables, into bloodlines whispered about at tracks. I didn’t know all that then. But I knew she carried something.

The same fire that burned in me.

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Under A Crescent Moon

Under a Crescent Moon

Western Sydney, Summer 1979.

The air hums with heat, petrol, and restless music. Holden and Ford battle for glory on the track, and in the backstreets their rivalry bleeds into every boy’s pride and one girl’s daring steps. Amid bonfires, stolen kisses, and engines that roar like gods, a fire ignites between two souls bound by something older than themselves.

Creig — wolfish, restless, always on the edge of laughter.
Isy — sharp-eyed, untamed, carrying the fire of a lineage she barely understands.

Together they stumble into love too fierce to name, a twin flame bond forged in sweat, steel, and song. But even as passion sparks, shadows of fate whisper — of gods who watch, of destinies that repeat, and of a reckoning that will demand everything they are willing to burn for.

Under a Crescent Moon is a mythic, coming-of-age love story where muscle cars are steeds, suburbs are battlegrounds, and desire burns as dangerously as petrol on hot tar.