[ INTRO ]
(Roots riddim — warm and open, not heavy like Kingdom Come Down. The bass is present but not threatening. A rhythm guitar on the offbeat, easy and certain. Eight bars. Both voices hum briefly before the first verse — the recognition of the shared feeling before the words.)

[ VERSE 1 — MALE 1 — LEVI ]
There is a fire on the mountain that I did not light —
it was burning when I found her and it has been burning since that night —
I have tried to understand the nature of this heat —
but the fire on the mountain does not answer — it repeats.
She came into a room and something shifted in the air —
the kind of shift that doesn't ask permission and doesn't care
what you had planned before she walked through any door —
the fire on the mountain — I had not felt that before.


[ VERSE 2 — MALE 2 — LIVINGSTONE JR. ]
My father told me: son, you'll know it when it comes —
not the pretty kind of knowing, the kind that leaves you numb
for a moment — like the moment after thunder speaks —
the kind of knowing that takes weeks to understand what it means.
I thought I understood it from the songs the elders made —
but the songs prepared me wrong — no song could have conveyed
what it feels to have a fire that you didn't start —
burning on the mountain that you now call your heart.


[ PRE-CHORUS — BOTH ]
I am not afraid of it —
I am not running from it —
I tend it like a man who knows
that the fire on the mountain is not his to own.


(Riddim opens fully. The warmest this single gets. Both voices on the chorus.)
[ CHORUS — BOTH ]
Fire on the mountain, fire on the mountain —
the kind of love that burns before you give it any name —
fire on the mountain, fire on the mountain —
I did not choose the fire but I'm glad it came —
fire on the mountain — it does not ask for permission —
fire on the mountain. That is love in its true condition.


[ VERSE 3 — MALE 1 — LEVI ]
She does not know the half of what she does to me —
or perhaps she knows exactly — and she lets me be
consumed at my own pace — she is patient with the burning —
she has her own fire on her mountain — I am learning
that two fires on two mountains in the same valley —
don't compete — they light each other when the night is falling —
I have been lit by her and she by me —
and the mountain between us is warm enough for both to see.


[ VERSE 4 — MALE 2 — LIVINGSTONE JR. ]
She laughs in a way that puts the rest of the room to shame —
not louder — just more honest — laughter without a frame —
and I think: this is what my father meant by the knowing —
this specific laugh in this specific light, still growing
in my chest three years on from the first time I heard it —
fire doesn't ask your permission — you don't get to deserve it —
it chooses you and then it makes its case —
and you either tend it or you let it waste.


[ PRE-CHORUS — BOTH ]
I am not afraid of it —
I am not running from it —
I tend it like a man who knows
that the fire on the mountain is not his to own.


(Chorus — the two voices closer in harmony than anywhere else in the single.)
[ CHORUS — BOTH ]
Fire on the mountain, fire on the mountain —
the kind of love that burns before you give it any name —
fire on the mountain, fire on the mountain —
I did not choose the fire but I'm glad it came —
fire on the mountain — it does not ask for permission —
fire on the mountain. That is love in its true condition.


[ BRIDGE — MALE 1 — LEVI ]
(Riddim drops to bass and rhythm guitar only. Levi alone — the most personal verse of the single.)
Empress —
I have written harder lines than this —
I have written about kingdoms falling and the weight of the word —
but the hardest line I ever had to write
is the one that says: I am not complete without you near —
and I mean it the way the mountain means the fire —
not as weakness. As the truest thing I know.


[ BRIDGE — MALE 2 — LIVINGSTONE JR. ]
(Bass alone. Livingstone Jr. in the same register.)
My father's music was about Jah and resistance —
I carry that — I will always carry that —
but he also came home to my mother every night —
and the fire on that mountain was not less holy
than any song he made. I understand now.


(Full riddim — the final chorus the warmest and most certain.)
[ FINAL CHORUS — BOTH ]
Fire on the mountain, fire on the mountain —
the kind of love that burns before you give it any name —
fire on the mountain, fire on the mountain —
I did not choose the fire but I'm glad it came —
fire on the mountain — it does not ask for permission —
fire on the mountain. That is love in its true condition.


[ OUTRO ]
(The riddim slows to the rhythm guitar alone — warm and unhurried. Both voices hum over it — the same hum as the intro. The single ends where it began: two fires, one mountain, the heat that stays.)