Kate continues her poetic journey of self-discovery in the next volume of the magical Kate-Pearl series. As in the earlier tales, she runs away, then hearing a dramatic African story violently - tsunami-like - changes her mind and has to struggle through many traumas and sacrifices to try to find him and at any cost re-win love.
But first, the search for the kindling spark of knowledge had sent Kate soaring to a grand university governed by creatures who protect wisdom more ancient than that even of writing. There, Kate had learned the science, folklore, and understanding of the fourth and most transformative of the earth's elements: Fire, manifested in the flickering multiple flames of the earth's journey through the fiery stars.
Her search for "him" is full of disaster. She sees him on the other side of the forest fire but how can she reach him? She tries seven - always terrifying - ways to get to him: across, round, over, through the sea, under, around again: all end in failure. At last she ventures down - centuries, millennia, more - through the rock layers of the earth's historic eras to the deepest fire within that energises the world. There, by the smiths at Vulcan's shadowy forge, she finds him - but he turns his back and walks away,
What can she do? only throw herself into the blazing horrifying flaming burning scaring-scarring flames, her nightmare, to try to finally reach him.