Supplemental Commetary (for the nerds and cool people)

 The beauty and curse of creative writing is that it is the gateway to infinite possibilities. However, whenever I sit down to write, I must begin at the very beginning and examine the basic elements that make up a story. According to Aristotle, the six major elements are plot, character, thought, diction, spectacle, and song. Thus, I begin planning out my writing by considering whose story I am going to tell and how I am going to tell it. Thinking on the words of C.S. Lewis in his essay "Why We Read," a major appeal of reading is the ability to live a life completely different from one's own and to look through the eyes of someone else. For this reason, I chose to write about a fantastical world of kingdoms and magic with the intention of allowing my audience to step into and fully immerse themselves in a place that is completely different from reality.

Elements of the setting and structure of this story draw inspiration from the tale of Sir Orfeo. Aside from also taking place in a magical kingdom, the forest is an important location in both stories. In Sir Orfeo, it is the domain of the fairies that kidnapped his wife. In "Cold Fire," there is a specific scene in which Glacian soldiers attack upon hearing word that the princess "will be passing through the Isack forest." In both stories, this place represents danger and the unknown. Horrible things happen to Sir Orfeo and Mara, but both resolve to try to rectify things, with Sir Orfeo journeying to take back his wife and Mara deciding to avenge the deaths of her fallen friends with a "bitter urge to make [Zaire] pay tenfold for what he had done, no matter what." In addition to the setting, both stories follow a similar structure of the disruption of order, chaos, and an eventual return to order. In Sir Orfeo, the kidnapping of Lady Heurodis interrupts the status quo and throws Sir Orfeo's life off balance, but the story eventually concludes with the restoration of Sir Orfeo on the throne with his wife by his side, just as it once was. "Cold Fire" does not boast a similar happy ending, but it still displays a similar trend with the relationship between the two kingdoms and the relationship between Mara and Zaire themselves. The story begins in a peaceful way with budding romance, spirals into a frenzy of war and betrayal, and eventually settles back down with hopes of a brighter future.

The Iliad by Homer provides the most direct inspiration for many of the plot events in "Cold Fire." Both the epic and this short story involve a brutal war in which many "have died needlessly." Just like Achilles's conquest to avenge Patroclus's death, Mara's loss of her best friend Savita is what pushes her desire to exact revenge at all costs. Both Achilles and Mara are destined to die in battle, with the royal seers telling Mara that she will meet her "demise on the battlefield by the hand of a former lover," but both enter into the fight anyway despite warnings from others. In addition, just as Achilles's opponent counterpart is Hector, Mara's is Zaire. Both Achilles and Mara successfully defeat their chosen enemy, but both also meet their demise not long after. "Cold Fire" ends with a truce between the two kingdoms as they take the time to "bury their dead and mourn the loss of their beloved heirs" and in the Iliad, the Greeks and Trojans also stop fighting in order to bury and mourn for their dead. Elements of the Aeneid also influence this story, most notably the relationship between Mara and Zaire. Similar to Aeneas and Dido, Mara and Zaire's love story comes to a tragic end as they both make choices that prioritize their kingdom over their love.

The characters in "Cold Fire" are the direct cause of the tragedy that ensues. Mara and Zaire are both tragic characters in their own way, similar to Creon in Sophocles's Antigone. In the play, Creon's tragic flaw is his pride which makes him believe that he is powerful enough to defy the will of the gods and also makes him incapable of accepting the truth from anyone but himself. He only comes to realize his mistakes by the end, but it is already too late to save anyone. In "Cold Fire," Mara's tragic flaw is also pride. This can be seen from the very beginning when she causes Zaire to cut his finger on a thorn, but blames it on him by telling him, "that's what you get for ignoring me." Even though she does come to love Zaire in return, "her own stubborn pride refused to let her be vulnerable around anyone, even him." For this reason, she pushes him away instead of accepting his help. Even at the very end, her pride and haughtiness in trying to prolong Zaire's suffering eventually leads to her own death. Zaire, on the other hand, allows his emotions to get the best of him on many occasions. When the guards refuse to let him in, "he made his way around the back to the garden" just so he can see Mara. He is so devoted to her that when she pushes him away, his whole world shatters. Blinded by his emotions, betrays Mara's trust and reveals her weakness to his army which only ends up hurting her. As a result, Mara's subsequent rampage brings him to his death. The ironic part of this tragedy lies in the implication that their love could have joined their kingdoms and stopped the fighting as seen by the ending, but their own flaws prevent that from happening.

Major themes in "Cold Fire" include the struggle between good and evil and the relationship between lovers. I drew inspiration from Prodicus's "The Choice of Heracles" and how Heracles is confronted with the personifications of Virtue and Vice. This is similar to constantly having to make choices about good and evil which is a trend throughout the story. However, unlike Heracles who sides with Virtue, Mara and Zaire fall for the lies offered by Vice and continually give into their temptations to do evil which only leads to more and more harm. Similar to the white and black horses mentioned in the Phaedrus, they also let their lowly desires and personal shortcomings get in the way of a proper relationship. When everything falls apart, Mara tells Zaire that "love made me blind and made you mad," but Zaire in turn argues that "love is what could have fixed everything," If only they could put aside their flaws and embraced a love that would orient them heavenward, their tragic fate could have been avoided.

The themes involving warfare draw inspiration from the Iliad and St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. In "Cold Fire," I specifically left the cause of the war ambiguous, merely saying that "relations between the kingdoms only grew worse," to show that so often wars are fought for useless or frivolous reasons. There is no clear good and evil side because both kingdoms are at fault in some way for refusing to find a peaceful solution to their disagreements. Examining the story under the lens of St. Thomas Aquinas's statements on what makes a just war only furthers this point as neither side is fighting for the aim to restore peace. There are moments in which people must act in self defense, such as when Mara finds herself surrounded with "the enemy soldiers approaching all around." In that case, her use of violence is justified, but when she uses her powers to purposely harm others out of spite and vengeance, she loses that justification. At the heart of it, however, the focus of "Cold Fire" and the Iliad is not so much about warfare as it is about its combatants and the humanity that is so often disregarded in times of conflict.

The rhetorical choices in the telling of "Cold Fire" are deliberate and are inspired by other works in some way. Once again, I draw inspiration from the Iliad by making the story told by an outside narrator who already knows the whole story. The opening addresses the reader directly and tells him/her to "listen to this tale of love and loss" and ends by urging people to continue to share the story with future generations. In addition, Mara's back and forth dialogue with the seers about whether or not she should join the battle draws inspiration from Plato's Crito. Similar to the way Crito tries to convince Plato to save his own life, the seers try to convince Mara that she is walking into an easily avoidable death. However, Mara argues that she "cannot just sit around and wait for someone to do something when I have the ability to do something myself" and therefore embraces her fate while staying true to her values and loyalty to her people. "Cold Fire" also contains more subtle symbols that deliberately reference Dante's Inferno. During the final battle, Mara and Zaire wade through "rivers of blood" which is the punishment for those who commit violence to one another in the seventh circle of Hell. Furthermore, the last thing Mara sees before she dies are "stars decorating the night sky," similar to what Dante sees after finally making it out of Hell which symbolizes hope at the end of all the pain and darkness. Finally, I purposely end the story with a poem which is a subtle nod to the quatrains found at the end of sections in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

In all, "Cold Fire" became a monster of a project in which I attempted to cram as many references to works of classic literature as I possibly could. Though I do not believe I can fully capture the essence of all these substantial pieces of literature and thought in a single short story, it is my every intention to try to pay due homage to the great writers of old who continue to inspire and instruct us to this day.