Up until that point, every single thing he had ever communicated came in the form of writing. Every exam, every presentation, every time he asked a beautiful woman out on a date, he communicated his intent with the slithering of a ballpoint pen across paper. Even his best friend and he had spent the entirety of the friendship locked in a battle of two pencils, each testing the other’s humor and beliefs one written sentence at a time.  This lasted until the night he turned 21, that is. 
   On that fateful night, another young man, drunken with sorrow and rage, used 98 of his 100 words in a hate-filled tirade against his girlfriend, who took the bold step to move away with another man who dared to use three of his words to tell her “I love you.” This young man, poisoned by grief and rage, slipped back into an ancient ritual, one he had used many times to cope with the oppressive silence that arose from the muted life of someone too afraid to spend even one of their precious words on someone else. He seized a road flare from the trunk of his car, and bolted down a steep gully that lied hidden below the town. 
Upon reaching the bottom of the gully, the grief-stricken young man with the road flare surveyed the dried grasses and brittle leaves of late summer that surrounded him through tearful eyes. Years of loneliness and silence had been passed in this little draw by setting small fires and gazing intently at them, comforted by their warmth and supple dancing. Even if he could speak to no one with courage, he could always speak to the flames. And they spoke back, with crackling and sizzling as their approval of his skill in lighting them. The young arsonist knew his craft well, and was able to start fires readily with almost anything. However, he always insured that when he started a fire, he could also put it out alone. Always, that was, until tonight. Blinded by sorrow, the young man struck the road flare with vengeance, and proceeded to whirl around his sanctuary with reckless abandon, lighting every trace of flammable material he could find.  Before long, this conflagration grew wildly out of control in the flashy dry summer grasses and shrubs, and began to run up-gulch towards the town. 
Horrified at his recklessness, the grief stricken 23 year old ran towards the town, out-flanking the fire as grew in strength and speed, and began wildly running around pounding on windows and doors in an effort to warn the townspeople of the danger of the fire.  At this same time, the new 21 year old was busy finishing a beer with his best friend, a birthday present from the latter to the former. Seeing the flames approach the town from the gulch, the 21-year old grabbed his friend by the arm and dragged him away from the bar. Pointing to a lake some distance away from the town, the 21-year old screamed at his friend “Run there! Get away from the fire!” 7 words spent on his life, his friend nodded in agreement and darted to safety. The 21-year old then proceeded to run wildly around the town, trying to warn as many townspeople as possible of the danger. In the process, he shouted “Run there!” at his neighbors exactly 45 times while pointing to the lake, leaving himself exactly 3 words to live in only 5 minutes. As the fire in the gulch began to skip from the ground to the treetops, it began running towards the town at lightning speed. With each house surrounded by a small cluster of bushes and trees, it was certain that the town would be lost, and even the town firefighters, seeing that if they stayed and fought they would surely perish in the flames, focused on evacuating the townspeople to safety alone rather than running around with hoses in valiant suicide. 
As the last of the townspeople scurried to safety, the 21-year old saw the arsonist around the corner of a small house just as it erupted into a ball of fire. The arsonist, having made three circuits of the town in his horrified frenzy, knew that he was looking at the last soul he could save. Witnessing the price of his mistake, and beleaguered with grief, he had made up his mind to die in the flames as repentance. The 21-year old, in his own frenzy to save his neighbors, now sprinted towards the suicidal arsonist. Before he could issue his final desperate warning, however, he saw that the arsonist’s eyes, glowing bright orange in the light of the flames, were pouring tears onto his face. This froze him in his tracks, as he saw not fear in those tears, but painful regret and guilt. The arsonist, knowing this was the last soul in the town, opened his mouth one final time to speak. Gesturing towards a curtain of fire in the trees around them and the ember showers now descending upon them, the arsonist spoke his final two words in a sobbing scream as the fire roared like a freight train in their ears: 

“I’M SORRY!” The 21-year old barely had time to come to grips with the fact that the arsonist had just issued his final apology before the universe sealed his life. A burning limb snapped loose from a tree above them and careened down on top of the arsonist, crushing him and ending his life in a shower of embers and smashed bone. Recognizing that his time to escape was now nearly gone, the 21-year old sprinted towards the lake. The trail to the lake was engulfed in 10 foot tall flames on either side, and the tops of the trees above him were beginning to explode into flame themselves as fire made its way from ground to treetop. He narrowly escaped burning to death in this gauntlet of fire, holding his breath as he ran to avoid burning his lungs. Eventually, he burst out into the waters of the lake, where the townspeople were huddled in terror on a small island a few hundred feet from the shore. He swam with intense vigor to the island, where the townspeople stared, mouths agape, at his singed clothing only put out by the waters of the lake, before the young man pointed back towards the town with tears in his eyes. Yet, the tears in his eyes were not of guilt or shame; rather, they were of intense pity and empathy. At that moment, the young man’s mouth opened for the final time, and out came these words, no louder than a whisper:

                                                “I forgive him.”

The young man collapsed, dead, to the sand of the island, and the flames licked at the heels of the heavens.