Puripyre
The puripyre, also known as living wildfire or just wildfire, is a species of fire elemental spirits. Its juvenile forms, fatini and sinaire, are very common.
Appearance
Adult puripyres are creatures of enormous size, composed of several tree trunks and branches intertwined in the vague shape of a quadrupedal animal, equipped with a long tail and a long neck. Their backs, bristling with an expanse of bare branches, are topped by what appear to be tall burning flames, which also extend along the entire length of their tails.
They could easily be described as a walking wildfire.
Their eyes are extremely similar to two burning embers, set in a skull of plasma and coal.
In reality, their bodies are not composed of the intertwined branches and trunks, but of the plasma and fire that surrounds, devours and holds them together.
Their core is located inside their chest, and can sometimes be seen through the cracks between the intertwined trunks, as a big, incandescent ball of energy.
Their size varies greatly, but they are always enormous and impressive to observe: they can be thirty to two hundred meters long (including their tails).
The energy center of an adult puripyre has a temperature between 1,800 °C and 2,000 °C, and from their mouths they can emit puffs of smoke with a temperature of 200-300 °C, which they generally use as an offensive weapon.
Life cycle
Despite their boundless strength and majestic appearance, puripyres begin their lives as tiny paralarvae, so common that few know that, as they grow, they will transform into such creatures: the fatini.
The fatinis look a lot like typical will-o'-wisps, animated flames, but red-orange in color and with four little feet that stick out from the base and allow them to move by galloping through the meadows. They have large blue-green eyes, the only detail that distinguishes the front and back of the creature, their four "legs" being undifferentiated from each other, allowing them to trot and gallop with the same dexterity independently forward and backward.
Their next stage of the life cycle is the sinaire: in this phase the paralarvae begin to gather branches, intertwining them together thanks to their spiritual power, to create a physical body that vaguely resembles, in shape and size, that of a wooden pony. Sinaires are still very clumsy and it can happen that they leave behind pieces of their new physical body, or that they place them badly giving the impression that they have more than four limbs, or that their shape is very messy. They often leave their energy center completely exposed and visible.
Finally, after a rather long period of time ranging from thirty to two hundred years, the sinaires manage to reach adulthood, becoming puripyres.
Only 0.02% of the fatini manage to survive so long as to reach adulthood, and for a very specific reason: the puripyres are very powerful, enormous and hungry creatures, capable of consuming entire spiritual forests.
Reproduction
Puripyre have an agamic reproduction, which leads to the creation of seeds that are planted in the ground and require high temperatures to germinate. Very often, after an intense forest fire, the area is populated by hundreds of fatinis, germinated from the seeds that have been heated.
Adult puripyres do not directly care for their offspring, but their presence makes their survival easier, thanks to the "pre-digestion" of combustible material: the fatinis will feed on the excess smoke, as they are not hot enough to burn the wood of ancient trees, which are much more nutritious and suitable for the growth of fire paralarvae.
In the absence of adults, newborn fatinis will tend to feed on the substances created by the combustion of straw and sticks, growing very slowly, and increasing their power so that they can digest wood of increasingly higher quality.
Habitat
Puripyres are nomadic spirits, who, thanks to the particular evolutionary strategy of always carrying their food with them, can travel endless distances. They are rare, but present in every area of the world, except near the polar circles, too cold and devoid of trees to be able to support them.
Diet
Puripyres feed on the energy released by combustion, which is why they build their bodies from ancient trees and slowly burn them, absorbing their nutrients over long periods of time. Because of their preference for slow-burning objects, they are instrumental in recycling depleted woods, the spiritual remains of what were once stands of trees that have been cut down and/or eradicated in the material world, but whose spiritual presence has remained sealed by the concrete, unable to disperse in its natural ways: the matter of spirit trees in depleted forests tends to burn through slow combustion.
Slow (or latent) combustion is a form of combustion that occurs over a prolonged period of time, sustained by the heat developed when oxygen directly attacks the surface of a fuel in the condensed phase.
Trivia
Slow combustion inside puripyres is what nourishes them for long periods, but a very similar phenomenon also occurs in nature, related to wildfires, and is much more devastating: the slow combustion of forest soil does not have the visual impact of flame combustion; however, this biomass combustion can persist for days or weeks after the fire has ceased, causing the consumption of large quantities of fuels and becoming a global source of emissions into the atmosphere, also sterilizing the soil due to the destruction of tubers, roots and seeds.
In some cultures, puripyres are also called "mothers of flames".
The largest puripyres are hunted for the highest quality charcoal, found in their chests, around their cores.
Despite their appearance, which mimics that of a vigorous living flame, the fatinis actually have a pleasant warm temperature and can be safely touched by human hands.
It is said that spotting a puripyre in its migratory phase, that is when it walks without having woods around it, brings good luck. It is actually very rare to see one!