Nicole Rivera Espinal

RISE Creative Writing Competition

#804-14-6890

Thursday, May 14th, 2015

The secret of fire

Long time ago, legend says there was a very lonely caveman that lived in Africa. His

only friend was a talking bear named "Poppa". Poppa and the caveman were best friends,

they did everything together, and they even shared the same living space, the cave. The cave

man had no friends because they all thought he was very moody. Since he can remember, the

only one who has always stayed with him was Poppa, his unconditional friend. Anyone who

saw this friendship thought it was ironic because normally cave man haunt bears and use their

skin to make all sorts of clothing. Poppa understood the caveman, although sometimes his

mood swings made him impossible to tolerate. Poppa wanted to help the caveman with his

constant mood swings but he couldn't figure out what was causing them. One day they were

out fishing and by sunset the caveman started crying without any explanation. His sadness

made him want to through all the fish back to the river. This made Poppa very angry because

they had been fishing all day to save up food for winter, and the cave man had just thrown a

days work like it was nothing. After throwing the fish back to the river the cave man walk

back to their cave. The precise moment the cave man entered the cave; he became unbearable

to be with. Poppa tried making him feel better bringing him many fish for them to eat but this

didn't stop the cave man from being sad. He felt hopeless seeing his best friend go through

this and worst of all, not being able to do anything that could al least make him smile. A

winter night, the cave man was crying, as usual, inside of the cave, and Poppa was trying to

find an alternative way to warm himself that wasn't going inside the cave. Besides the cave

Poppa found two wood sticks. He started rubbing them against each other because this made

them warm. After doing these for a long period of time flames started coming out of the

wood sticks. Neither of them had ever watched these happened. Poppa made the caveman

walk out of his beloved cave to see what he was accomplishing. The sad cave man walked

out of the cave to see this weird, hot, orange flame. His mood switch immediately and a smile

was automatically drawn in his face. From this day on, every time the night came Poppa

would lit up a fire to make his caveman friend happy. He concluded that what was making

the cave man sad was the darkness of the night. Light made the cave man happy and feel like

he was alive. This is how Poppa discovered how light affects the mood of his best friend, the

cave man, which was almost always exposed to light.