The Dance of Fire and Ice

When the world was still young and the sky unadorned,
Two forces were born where the silence was torn.
One came as a flicker, a blaze without end,
The other, a breath that no sunlight could bend.

Fire stepped forward with a crown made of flame,
Her eyes wild embers no ocean could tame.
Her gown was the dawn, all scarlet and gold,
Her touch could make steel from the raw and the cold.

Ice stood in shadow, so quiet, so stark,
His robes shimmered blue like the edge of the dark.
His fingers could carve out a world with a trace,
His voice like the snowfall that softens all space.

"What are you doing here, sister of sparks?"
Asked Ice with a glance toward the wild-growing arcs.
"You don't belong in the stillness I reign —
Your heat only withers, your wildness is vain."

But Fire just laughed, her crackle so sweet,
Her dance sent the cinders to fall at his feet.
"You call me a threat, yet you call me a muse.
For without me, dear brother, all color would lose."

**"You devour," said Ice with a chill in his breath.
"You leave only ash, you are chaos and death."
But Fire drew near with a smoldering grin,
"And you, little Frost, freeze the world from within."

They circled each other, the dusk as their stage —
Fire's whirl of wildness, Ice's calm rage.
The dance had begun with a spark and a sigh,
A waltz of two forces too mighty to die.

Fire spun faster, her flames licking the air,
Her footsteps were thunder, her heartbeat laid bare.
Her wild hair of copper streamed wild and free,
Her glow made the shadows all turn just to see.

But Ice, ever patient, just shifted his stance,
Each movement deliberate, slow in his dance.
With every cool breath, the flames lost their height,
For nothing burns bright in the frost-bitten night.

They clashed at the center, no victor, no fall —
Fire's heat met the frost like a storm meeting squall.
The world held its breath as their power combined,
Where fire turned to vapor, and frost redefined.

"I am change," whispered Fire, her glow burning low.
"I birth every dawn, I make every heart grow."
"I am stillness," said Ice, his breath long and slow.
"I cradle the quiet where wild things won’t go."

Back and forth, they would spin without rest —
Neither was lesser, neither the best.
Fire would rise, and the world would ignite,
Ice would descend with the hush of the night.

Their dance became seasons, the cycle of days —
The blaze of the summer, the frost’s quiet haze.
Without one, the other would rage out of hand,
But bound in their balance, the world could withstand.

They are not enemies, as some might believe —
For ice makes the fire more precious to grieve.
The fire, in turn, shows the frost how to feel,
For even the coldest of hearts can unseal.

So still they keep dancing, by mountain and sea —
Fire and Ice in a fierce harmony.
Their steps shape the sunrise, the snowfall, the flood,
The bloom in the springtime, the fall of the bud.

For passion and peace are not meant to divide —
They are threads of one fabric, forever entwined.
No fire burns longer than ice can endure,
But no frost remains where the warmth is so pure.

So watch them each dawn where the red meets the blue,
Where frost clings to leaves as the sunlight breaks through.
The dance of two forces both fleeting and grand —
The fire and the ice, hand in hand, hand in hand.

- Khushi Kaul