Fire World
Seas of fire blew in from the prairie one day and never left. This is what we tell each other. This is our lore.
The flames ebb down in the draws for a few hours each day early in the morning, so most of us unplug. Some have simply stopped caring though, and their houses remain shut like vaults, even during this peace.
Nights are the worst, when the flames mix with moonlight and scream. We all stay inside at night to protect against this. Even in my home though, the most well built of all, with my shutters clamped tight and my blankets pull high about my chin, the flames still lick at me. They seep in like sand through the tiniest clacks and holes to touch my body and flash their pain.
Right before dawn it starts to burn and boil in a doubled effort. Panic sets in because there is no place to go. You are as far away from the world as you can get, you are deep inside of yourself even, pushed back into that far corner of your mind, and yet the flames break like waves over your naked soul and burn, burn, burn.
Then those lovely streaks of sunlight start to shine, and the flames turn to look, and you can soothe the places is has scorched. As the morning grows the flames shrink away, gathering low in the draws. Is it gathering strength down there? Do the waters of our cricks re-nourish it? Does it drink!
For these glorious early hours we work like bees. At least we used to, back when there was hope. Seems like many of us feel there isn’t any left though, so you may see us simply sitting on our porches in awe, or lying lazily in the grass, day dreaming about a world without fire. Our stone tongues melt and we talk again—we even laugh, here in this respite. We... We play. I’ve danced. And I’ve runs so fast down the lanes for no reason at all. Oh how it feels so clean to run fast without the flame’s constant burn nipping right behind.
Then those horrid pops commence, down there where the fire drinks the water. Booms and cracks, like near whip strikes and far bomb blasts. We stay though—still we stay and refuse to believe, and only the screams of the first burned herd us back inside our cages. Those nightmare screams of utter agony haunt us all. I would take a thousand years of predawn roasting over a single minute of the new day’s first strike. If you are among those poor creatures chosen for sacrifice, the screams you loose just then are not from you at all, because you are already gone. Those flame take these victims away, and the remaining bodies, frantic with panic, run in worthless circles. There exists nothing good about this, and nobody has been taken and come back quite the same. And so at the sound of those screams we lower our heads and enter our prisons like beaten animals.
Kids and adults alike shore up the doors and windows and stuff wadding into the visible cracks. Tea is put on the stove and books are brought out. From you my dear reader, I might hear said this: “Well, surely this is a pleasant time as well? Seems so.” Could you though, absolutely could you, be any further from the truth if you had tried! This time with the tea on and the books out and the flames pacing around outside like wolves looking for the weak, is a devil-brought terror storm. Gathering gathering gathering. The pain merely leaves the skin and jumps into the brain. And brain pain is the foulest by far.
So it is that when those first little licks and kisses begin upon your skin, you watch with relieve as the pain leaps from your mind and onto your skin. There are several hours hence that are perfectly fine. No work outside can be done, but short trips out and about cost very little in the universal currency of our pain. A few hours more though and outside might as well be outer space, and inside is no place for living. Life gets pushed into the background and in steps survival, who will take us bravely all of the way until that final predawn strike. At which point, as I’ve said, even brave survival cowers, and only guide-less horror reins.
That is pretty much it, and there is no way to change it. In a way it is beautiful and we are fortunate. I could think of much worse. I’ll probably try to make the best of this, and find some beauty shining like gold amongst the little details.