Fire.  So much fire.  Fire so hot and expansive that not even being covered in a foot of ice would save you from being burned.  The only way you could survive in this inferno would be if you were made of fire itself.  Fortunately, that wasn’t really a problem for the flame’s current inhabitant.  It was born of these fires, and it would die of these fires, again, and again, and again.  Such was the life of a phoenix.  Both blessed and cursed to live one lifetime after another, always the only one of its kind.  Why it was chosen for this task, it wasn’t sure.  What purpose it was supposed to fulfill, no one had ever told it.  All it knew was the continuous cycle of death and rebirth that had no known beginning nor end.  The phoenix looked around before it started to gather up the beginnings of its next death pyre.  The next burning would come soon, and it wouldn’t do for it to miss it.

Notes: Sometimes I muse on what the life of a phoenix would be like; this was the result.