From bcca9643813ff3bd324cf8886d9c64399558dcac Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Danila Fedorin Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2026 11:09:47 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] Add initial draft of spirits Signed-off-by: Danila Fedorin --- content/writing/spirits/index.md | 76 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 76 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/writing/spirits/index.md diff --git a/content/writing/spirits/index.md b/content/writing/spirits/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dee1d3f --- /dev/null +++ b/content/writing/spirits/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +--- +title: "The Day of Spirits" +date: 2026-04-16T20:38:09-07:00 +draft: true +type: thevoid +--- + +The humid air swirls with colorful spirits. They trace its invisible currents +in spirals through open spaces, cling to branches, drip down stone faces +and, awakened by the first beams of the rising sun, ooze newly out of trees +like sap. Lulls of wind leave them gliding gently downward to be picked up +again. From a distance, vortices of the spirits' malleable confetti travel along +plains like benevolent drunken djinns. With translucent jellylike hands and +fingers they wave at each other in passing, or hold each other in waltzes +often perturbed by the breeze. Big luminescent white eyes take in with +wonder and awe the only day they are ever to see. + +Among them, Hex. An exception within the colorful milieu, he remembers, if +vaguely, the mornings that precede this one. He feels an unbroken thread +of identity dissolved somewhere within his red-pink body. + +His life proves to be not quite that lonely. It's true, spirits disappear at +dusk, bursting like soap bubbles while the last rays of the setting sun +still caress from behind horizon-clouds the darkening sky. However, it's +true as well that they are born each morning, leaping with passing fish +out of streams and accumulating in drops of dew. An apple doesn't fall far +from the tree, and a spirit from the landscape that gives it rise. Again +and again Hex encounters similar motifs. + +Take Molly, who hangs now with Hex from a grapevine, the both of them agitated +by the wind and decidedly resembling pennants on some carnival string. The +first Molly he met, who serves now for him as a departure point for a whole +lineage of kindred spirits, was a deep red. She was born during a Fire. +That day, dark overburdened clouds that covered the sky like dense wool +unleashed after much unwanted loitering their promised downpour, and with it +streaks of lightning. The flames spread quickly through the birch forest +beneath. The Fire raged for days, sucking in its gluttony the surrounding +atmosphere and spewing it upwards mingled with ash. A haze of purple, pink, +orange and yellow replaced the thunderclouds. + +Hex was swept that day by the Fire's incessant breath towards the birches. +Flames danced among charred silhouettes that used to be trees. +A great many spirits were being born, sizzling out of ember-glowing +stumps and erupting in geysers above the flickering dance to drift upwards +like hot-air balloons. Molly was among them. + +They sat together on a ledge. By some trick of their geometry, the surrounding +cliffs gave them refuge from the wind. Hex sensed for what felt like the first +time the weight of his body, a sort of permanence. He wanted Molly to understand. +He kept stumbling, espousing one flawed analogy after another, sketches of a +painting that he didn't know how to finish, unable to get across the _feeling_, +no, "comfort" isn't quite right, nor is "boldness", nor... She might have +vaguely understood. + +Molly herself wanted weightlessness; he saw the spark in +her eye when she talked of waking up in the arms of a great column of air, +carried up, towards the ash-filled sky, one of the first that day to glimpse +the whole ball of the sun. She spoke heatedly of the warmth and excitement, +but also of the danger, of the many ways in which the Fire was capable of +reclaiming the lives it just spawned. That's what she was doing, her face +lit from behind him by the setting sun, when the first Molly popped out +of existence. + +For days the Fire and its remnants precipitated reddish spirits among whom +Hex often heard tales of burning, rising, destruction. Thoughts +of the Fire were in the air, exchanged by passerby spirits carried in +its currents for brief moments along similar trajectories. He found a Molly +and reminded her of her of the day before, and saw that same spark in her +eyes. They spent that day rolling like tumbleweeds through a nearby valley, +talking in voices oscillating with their rotation. + +The fire, though burning still now with the peat from a swamp into which +the birches receded, was becoming forgotten. Gusts of wind swept trees +that remained. + +* drunk djinns: dust devils in Blood Meidian.