The Fire Inside the Statue

They say the statue in the old courtyard was sculpted by a man who had once loved a goddess. Not just any goddess, but a spirit of fire—brilliant, wild, and wholly untamable. The statue was his offering, a way to keep her close, even after her light had disappeared from the world.

For most, it’s just a myth, something whispered to children before bedtime. But I know the story differently—because I have seen the fire move.

The statue stands alone in the forgotten square, cracked at the shoulders, worn by decades of wind and rain. Her eyes are hollow, her arms outstretched like she’s reaching for something she’ll never grasp. Ivy curls around her ankles like chains, and moss has softened the shape of her jaw. And yet, despite it all, she glows—faintly, impossibly, from the inside.

I found her when I was sixteen. Lost in a storm, soaked and shivering, I stumbled into the courtyard after the bus dropped me off two miles from home. Thunder rolled overhead. I collapsed at the statue’s base, begging for shelter from something that could never move.

But then the warmth came.

It was subtle at first—like standing near a fire just far enough to feel its heat but not its flames. I thought I was imagining it. Delirium, maybe. Or a trick of the mind. But then, as I curled up against the stone, I heard it:

A heartbeat.

Slow. Steady. Ancient.

I never told anyone.

I returned the next day, and the next. I began to talk to her.

I told her about my mother’s silence, my father’s ghost, and the bruises I learned to hide under sleeves. I told her how some nights I left the house and wandered until my legs gave out, searching for something that felt like truth. She listened—at least, I believed she did.

And every time I wept at her feet, her stone seemed warmer. Like some ember deep inside her chest was rekindling, spark by spark.

Years passed. I grew older, heavier with questions the world had no answers for. But she stayed the same—still, eternal, haunting.

They tried to remove her once.

The town council said she was unsafe, that the courtyard would be repurposed, modernized. But the crane broke down. Then the crew refused to come back. They said the statue gave them headaches, nosebleeds. That her eyes followed them when they moved.

People laughed, of course. Said it was just local superstition. But no one tried again.

And still, she burned.

One night, I came to her with my own fire—burning rage, raw and messy. My partner had left me. My writing was failing. I couldn’t sleep without hearing my own screams echoing back at me.

“I’m becoming stone,” I told her, my forehead pressed to her cold feet. “I feel myself freezing over, day by day. I can’t feel joy anymore. I’m scared I’ll forget how.”

And then, something cracked.

A real sound.

I looked up. A hairline fracture had appeared across her chest—thin as thread, glowing faint orange like fire under skin.

I touched it. It pulsed.

I don’t know what happened that night. But when I woke up, I was lying in the grass, and the statue’s outstretched hands were no longer empty. She held a single, blackened feather—like something charred in flame, like something once winged.

They say some statues are just stone.

But I believe she’s alive.

Not in the way we understand life—with blood and lungs and a name—but with a will. A purpose. A soul carved too deeply to ever vanish.

Some believe the fire is cursed.

I think it’s a gift.

They never talk about what happens to those who carry too much silence. How they turn to marble from the inside out. How grief, when compressed, becomes its own kind of monument—unmoving, cold, but still unbearably heavy.

I know this because I nearly became one.

And it was she who stopped me.

She reminded me that fire doesn’t always destroy. Sometimes it warms. Sometimes it carves light into darkness. Sometimes it teaches you that to survive, you must burn.

Not down—but through.

The last time I saw her, I was leaving town.

I brought her a letter I’d written, folded neatly with trembling hands.

“I’m not the same anymore,” it read. “I know you never spoke, never moved. But somehow, you gave me back the fire I’d lost.”

I left the letter beneath her hand and walked away, not looking back.

But I swear I felt a breeze push against my spine, warm as breath, full of ashes and sparks.