Burning Desires

He was a winged man… A man of the sky and of the clouds and of the air; and his crime on that fateful night was one of the most terrible ones he could've ever committed. Stefan could feel the darkness closing in around him as he stepped lightly through this suddenly hostile forest. Behind him, somewhere in the distance, the entire horizon was lit up with the living flames that engulfed the entire southern portion of his former home. A lot of events led up to this one, but his most significant memory when he looked out over the dimming jungle clearing was of the one Gathering that had begun this tortuous lifestyle of exile.
Every year, the inhabitants of primitive earth would meet in a small clearing under a rounded marble memorial shrine dedicated to their brave warrior ancestors. There had once been a long and bloody war waged between the men of the sky, the women of the sea, and the children of the land in the past. Although the war had ended in a truce, there were two conditions linked to the survival of the truce. The first was that the descendants of the warriors would meet once a year to socialize and remember their ancestors, and the second was that no one ever intermarries with other species.
Years passed, but the story of their ancestor's war lived on through word of mouth. The people of the earth, air, and sea were afraid of another war and they would whisper pensively amongst themselves for hours on the night before the yearly Gathering. Eventually, a man called Stefan ascended to the throne and began his reign as the level headed leader of the sky people. He was revered for his strength of body, his power, and his skill at leading the people of the air. However, everything changed on the night of the winter solstice, when he led his people into this meadow for an annual meeting and laid eyes on a Siren.
She was not the first he'd ever seen, but she was the most beautiful. This woman had the darkest, curliest hair and the most radiant caramel colored skin of all of the Sirens. Her silken and shimmering hair fell around her thin face, providing the perfect frame for her liquid chocolate eyes and full red lips. The Siren's skin was clearly moisturized with only the best soaps and perfumes, for her sweet and enticing scent reached him even from across the meadow. She had commanded his total attention from the minute she looked at him out of the corner of her eye to the moment she beckoned him toward the dark mists of the forest behind them.
"How long can we be gone?" His question to her was soft and gruff as the pair crept away from the people in the clearing. Her ruby lips curved upward slyly as she glanced back at him, "As long as it takes."
They were spotted in the midst of their attempt to return, and Stefan was taken into the furious custody of the very people who had once supported him. They banished him from their forest the very next night.
But now, he was returning simply to witness the burning of the forest that had given him a reason to be bitter. He lost the girl he wanted, his home, and nearly lost his life as well. None of that mattered now though, because he had gotten his revenge.
He turned away from the dark, foreboding mists that crept from the prison of trees he once knew as his home. Screeches of terror came from his people in the distance. No doubt they were waking from their slumbers to the horror of singed feathers and burning wings. Unlike his own, that is. His very own pure black wings glistened and shone in the fleeting moonlight. Small parts of the gorgeous pair of wings also caught glimpses of the orange and yellow hue cast off by distant flickering flames that rapidly devoured whole trees and spat out ashen remains.
No, his wings were pure and unscathed by this burning killer. He let out a breath and turned away from the beloved marble shrine that he had known for half of his lifetime. What came next went down in history as his famous last words, spoken in an unknown tongue that translates roughly to "The world is finished."