On the Fire-Bird

From the field notes of Salan Kir'ith:

"Of the Fire-Bird, or Fire-Rukh, there are a great many things of which I may speak. The Plumage of the Bird is well-known to the meanest of naturalist and scholar, being of the ruby red of Flame and dagged like the fire's tongues; indeed, such plumes glow and warm with their own inner Fires. These ornaments are valued highly by those who may place such claim to them, being of a great size and beauty; there are those who would make Raiment of them, and others Armour, or a Magery of Fire.

"Such is the desire for beauty that there are those that would dare the Fire-Rukh's brazen Talons and burning Bill, sharp as swords. For the Bird is great in size as the Dragon is mighty, and may bear away the greatest of beasts in its claws; to char to ashes in the burning Fires of its body.

"There are those scholars which contend that the Fire-Bird is as the same as the Phoinix. It is my contention that such fools are ignorant; there is as nothing known of the Phoinix related to the Fire-Bird, save for the touch of fire. There is found nothing of the Phoinix's purples and gold in the raiment of the Fire-Rukh; nor does the Fire-Rukh craft its egg of myrrh and spice, intending an immolation. Indeed the egg of the Bird is of a singular sort, gleaming like an Ember, and scorches the stone of its cradle.

"That Egg, being singular in nature, bears a great Secret. If the egg of the Bird is spirited from the stone, or expressed before time from the body (a gambit favoured by a Fire-Rukh in travail, to use as a destruction of flame), and is thrust intact into a body of cool Waters, the shell crumbles to a powder of ashes. Within these ashes and the Body of the Egg, with fortune, lies a great pearly Jewel, as if of Moonstone, of the greatness of a grown man's head and washed about with ghostly Fire. Such Rukh-Seeds may be of the most powerful of Mageries."