Fluorine: An Unscientific Fable The Fluorine flows through the water we drink, finding its way into our bones and teeth; it bargains with their keepers to lend its strength. But its stronghold is the fluorspar: delicate in color with ultraviolet glow, seemingly innocent and fragile. Miners know its power, begging its help to make the hardest iron flow. A chemist, fool that he was, wanted to treat with Fluorine and learn its secrets. He made acidic summons at the castle walls; Fluorine, answering in rage, burst forth clad in hydrogen armor. It moved with such force that it left its own battlements in ruins. The fool chemist leaned in, thinking his rude gesture would be met with peace, but the Fluorine savagely lept up to burn and rip his eyes. The chemist's sight was saved by its weakness, his glasses bore the brunt of the Fluorine's assault. He was amazed to see the crystal turned milky, its surface etched. That man's disrespect and ignorance knew no bounds. Not recognizing the Fluorine for the power and terror it was, he thought to enslave it, making dainty articles whose sale would weigh down his purse. He called the Fluorine out again and again to battle. The Fluorine never refuses a challenge and came each time, but the chemist used subtle arts and masks to deceive it, channeling its fury against glass once more, but this time to work beautiful patterns. Frosted flowers, children playing in a background of fog, seals of kings and nobles, all these the Fluorine was forced to etch in service to its tormentor's design. But the Fluorine is ever patient and never forgives. It waited in servitude for the time that foolish chemist would grow lax. Soon enough, thinking the demon his tame pet, he began to relax his guards and grow careless in his arts; then the Fluorine burst from its prison. Not content to blind this impudent man, it followed his breath to the secret places of his lungs. It devoured them from within, cutting him off forever from life-giving air. As the chemist lay dying, the Fluorine moved through his laboratory, throwing down his tables and chewing his apparatus to pieces. As a last act of spite, it reduced all the gold he'd gained to dust, and in the man's last moment of life he heard the Fluorine swear death to all chemists. In the years to follow, scores upon scores of chemists stormed the Fluorine's stronghold, trying at first to study it and, later, to rip it from its hydrogen armor. The Fluorine went forth eagerly, bursting its stronghold asunder with joy and lust for death as soon as it knew their approach. Each chemist fell before it, dying like first. Others, not content to concede the battle between their clan and the Fluorine, became more desperate. They devised a plan to use the lightning (a fearsome enemy their kind had enslaved a century before) to pry the armor from Fluorine's body. The lightning worked, but all too well. The naked Fluorine's rage grew towering at the affront. Their foe's berserk frenzy made its previous strength seem the tenderness of a mother toward her child. It ripped holes through the vessels with which they had thought to contain it and they all met the fate of their fathers. Now, Platinum was the noblest of metals: rare, precious, stately in mass and slow to anger. Platinum seldom fought any battle, but was better able than any others of the metals to weather an onslaught. Platinum even kept its unscathed luster through attacks from foes that crumbled its brother, Gold. Yet another chemist launched an attack. This time, he allied with Platinum, entreating it to help him hold the Fluorine captive. Platinum found the Fluorine's excesses and rages unsettling, and it gladly agreed to help the chemist. The chemist called the Fluorine from his castle, and in its armor trapped it within the Platinum. He cooled the chamber to a chill unknown except in the pole (for, while cold could not shield against the Fluorine's attacks, it did slow its rage.) The chemist then called upon the lightning and the lightning undid every bolt and weld in the Fluorine's hydrogen armor, leaving it naked and raging within that Platinum cell. The chemist forgot the door! That door could no metal be, else the lightning would turn back at its touch and be lost within the walls. The door of simple rubber proved no match for the Fluorine's enraged might. It did the Platinum grievous harm, throwing itself against the prison's walls, but it could not break through. When it saw the door, the Fluorine devoured it in a breath, rushing out to embrace the chemist. That chemist's apprentice was wiser than his master (or, perhaps, he learned from his master's death.) Knowing that the door could be no metal, but knowing the need to hold the Fluorine at bay, he hit upon the idea of carving a door from a stone of the Fluorine's stronghold. A single crystal of fluorspar became the new gate to the prison. The chemist led the Fluorine into the chamber, then sent in the lightning once again. The Fluorine fair lept from his armor, ignoring the walls it knew it could not break and bent its fury upon the door. In horror, it found it could not scratch it! The power of its own walls was turned against it! The Fluorine was at last imprisoned, naked and cold. The chemists made the Fluorine their servant; as with all their servants, they used him illy and for ill purpose. The inert gasses were the most chaste and modest of all the elements. None had ever seen one join with another; most thought they never would. One chemist charmed Xenon, the most stately and second-eldest of those maidens (the oldest sister, Radon, wore her modesty well for a time, but often cast it off, losing her nature and transforming into something else as base as any other substance.) He charmed Xenon, the little stranger, for he knew that, as an elder, and a more stately member of her family, she was mild and moved with slow dignity (unlike Helium, who ran from the slightest touch), and was thus the most suited for his purpose. The chemist led her into a chamber with that demon, Fluorine, knowing it to be the most vicious element of all. But, even Fluorine was held back by her modesty. At first, it danced around her, leering, yet it was not brave enough to touch her. The chemist, not content to marvel at how her mien held even Fluorine in check, pressed them closer and closer, rudely shoving them together. Fluorine, driven mad with lust by Xenon's touch, finally overcome his reluctance and joined with her. Not content with that, revelling in his power and depravity, he joined himself to her six times over. Yet, the Fluorine still raged against the chemist for using him to such an end. Seeing that Xenon had been joined, the chemists now rechristenned her entire family the 'noble gasses.' Such a name made mocking jest, painting their purity as merely snobbishness requiring a forceful enough boor to overcome. One last time the chemists used their enslaved demon. They led him forth in cold and chains made from his castle walls to join and work his way with Uranium and Plutonium, the titans whose hearts held the unstable fires of creation. Fluorine came as gentle as a kitten and peaceful as a dove. It knew in its yellow-green heart that they used it, now, to create the Atomic Bomb. And Fluorine saw that this could lead man to death at his own hand. Now Fluorine waits, gentle, content to build our teeth and bones, flowing in our water. For, from within us it hopes to, one day, watch the death of us all.