Background
It's the Midsummer Fire Festival! That special time of year when passion burns brightest, when young love blooms, and when the fittest and bravest strut their stuff.
It's a tradition in Saillonne--older than the raising of the lands--that the Fireblossom, that rarest flower of the desert, be procured by would-be lovers as a symbol of their passion and devotion to the object of their desires. But rare they are, and necessarily difficult to obtain--too valuable for coin, they must be won through feats of skill, endurance, and bravery.
Each year, the Ahrimin come to town with their summer wares, and some come bearing Fireblossom. Each has their own test of worthiness--one might demand you walk barefoot across hot coals with neither pain nor injury, while another requires that you swallow a flaming sword. Most of the trials are dangerous, and folk of worth frown on these barbaric practices. Still, the young find ways of escaping their overseers to test themselves against the savages, to earn the ultimate symbol of their devotion.
The Fireblossom is an odd sort of plant. It apparently does not feed upon water and fertile soil, as a proper plant ought to--instead, it feasts upon the light of the sun alone, thriving in the driest and hottest regions of the desert. Somehow, it stores that warmth within its bulb, its life force rising and intensifying as the summer scorches on, until, on the hottest day of the year--midsummer--it blooms, releasing the energy in a burst of fire. The petals remain aglow like burning heartwood for days, slowly casting off embers which serve as seeds, germinating in the hot sands of the harshest desert. Eventually, the entire plant burns away to its core, a hard, coal-like substance that can be polished to an onyx-like sheen.
Myths surrounding the Fireblossom insist that it has magical properties when applied to matters of love: specifically, that if you give one to the object of your love, while confessing your devotion, it will bloom at that precise moment, blessing your union and assuring a long, happy life together. Of course, if it blooms too early, your love will be intense, but will burn out before long. And if it blooms too late...your love shall be true, but one shall long outlast the other, and be doomed to sorrow. Of course, these are all just superstitions--real practitioners value the plant for its empirically powerful alchemical properties--but they are alive and well in the minds and hearts of the Sailleen. And pity the poor souls for whom the flower never blooms at all, for their love is unrequited, and they shall ever be cursed by it.
Curiously, all of this has its origins in ancient rituals of the Ahrimin. Their reverence for the Fireblossom is far more serious in nature. The young must travel alone and unequipped into the harshest desert during the hottest season of the year, counting on their harmonious bond with the desert to survive. Properly completed, such a vision quest ends with them finding the elusive flower, at which point it bursts into bloom, signifying the rightness of the moment. The fire spirits within would then grant the questor a spark of enlightenment, and he would return knowing his true purpose. Of course, should the timing of the bloom be off, or--worse still--should the questor never find such a flower, it did not bode well for his life to follow.
One wonders how such a sacred flower became a commodity for torturing the city-dwellers for amusement. The inability of the blooming flowers to spread their seed into their own habitat would seem to insult the Ahrimin's concept of harmony with the Magnificent World--their name for the deserts of the region. Of course, some say the Ahrimin who trade with the Sailleen are outcasts of their own kind, who have turned their back on their ancient ways--that the true nomads of the desert never deign to set foot in or near the cities. Perhaps, and perhaps not--what do the city folk care, in any case? It all provides a jolly diversion on what might otherwise be the most sweltering, unpleasant day of the year.