Add first complete draft

Signed-off-by: Danila Fedorin <danila.fedorin@gmail.com>

content/writing/spirits/index.md

@@ -5,56 +5,55 @@ draft: true
 type: thevoid
 ---
 
-The humid air swirls with colorful spirits. They trace its invisible currents
+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.
+again. From a distance, eddies of the spirits' malleable confetti travel
+along plains. With translucent jellylike hands and fingers they wave at
+each other in passing or hold each other in breeze-perturbed waltzes. 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
+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.
+still caress from behind horizon-clouds the darkening sky. They are born
+each day, 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
+its genitive landscape. 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
+by the wind 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
+lineage of kindred spirits, was a deep red: she was born during a Fire.
+That day, dark overburdened clouds covered the sky like dense wool and
 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.
+Hex was swept then 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.
+They sat together on a ledge. His pink hand held hers. 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
+agency. 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
+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
@@ -64,13 +63,144 @@ 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
+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.
+Recent days replaced the dying Fire with anxious winds. Though the sun at times
+still paints fields white-gold and turns trees' leaves to verdant haloes,
+the air feels heavy. Newborn spirits are a deep blue. Molly's latest iteration
+is an iridescent cornflower-cyan. Words that used to evoke in her a subtle smile,
+imagery that resonated with her, things that Hex has long since learned to
+sprinkle into their chats to see her light up --- all this seems now to have lost
+its potency. A knot forms in his stomach at the swelling thought that soon he
+will have nothing to say at all.
 
-* drunk djinns: dust devils in Blood Meidian.
+It's the wind. It strengthens even now, augmented with dust, fragments
+of bark, torn leaves, fireflies. Dark clouds in the distance turn in circles
+on a pillow of rain-streak straw. Colored spirit-dots rush with helpless
+violence on the horizon. The storm draws nearer.
+
+They talk --- Hex still clumsily searching for words --- but it is becoming
+harder and harder to hear. The sky is polluted at first by pioneering clouds,
+then enveloped completely. The sun is shut out. The rain, not straw anymore
+but billowing sheets, beats against their faces. There is no way to see and
+speak but facing away from this relentless onslaught. Water runs in
+miniature rivers down their faces. Their hands tightly grip their
+anchor-vine.
+
+Hex goes first. Slapped in the face with surprising force by a flying branch,
+he loses his grip and is carried immediately downwind. Molly grabs him
+with dexterity but halves thereby her own hold on the branch and mere
+seconds later is dislodged herself. The two cling to each other for a few
+moments before impacting rock and bouncing in different directions.
+
+Having joined the assembly of dislodged detritus Hex tumbles upwards.
+Ground alternates with sky in his vision, interspersed occasionally with
+glimpses of Molly's cyan. In a customary spirit gesture he reaches out his
+hands for something to grab but finds nothing but raindrops and hail. All
+the while he accelerates towards the clouds, his gravity bizarrely
+inverted; precipitation and debris increasingly obscure ground. At
+breakneck speed a yellow spirit beaten to foam whizzes past him to collide
+into a wind-blue byflyer in a pine explosion spewing polychrome droplets.
+The newly-acquainted pair exchange introductions that Hex can't make out
+over a deafening howling.
+
+With each crazed revolution around his axis he glances heavier objects in
+his vicinity. An entire birch, a survivor of the Fire unceremoniously
+uprooted by the Wind, scoops him with its willowy fingers and finally
+dilutes his momentum. The act of moving his head reacquires its familiar
+meaning. Hex dares to look around. Searchlight sunbeams pierce blackened
+clouds in rapid sweeps; lightning retaliates against the incursions in
+blinding, sprawling nets. Glimpses of brown flicker behind dense clouds
+and curtains of rain. Its orderly guidance of gravity and sunlight
+replaced by disagreeing gusts, a new forest orbiting an unseen center
+points in all directions at once. There is no sign of Molly.
+
+Above is indistinguishable now from below, and left from right. Directions
+other than _inward_ lose their meanings. Inward too flies Hex's
+birch-mount, and he with it. Lightning-lit glimpses of brown stretch
+finally into a continuous window.
+
+A vast beige clot levitates among the clouds, its colossal mass allowing
+it the luxury of unshakeable inertia. Dozens of armlike appendages
+protrude from its core, enormous in size compared to a single spirit's but
+spindly relative to the whole. A meteor of pine still engaged in
+conversation impacts the planetoid, sending a ripple through its body and
+forming a crown that is pulled as if by surface tension into a crater that
+rapidly narrows into nothing. A green band lingers on the giant's surface,
+then assimilates into the whole.
+
+The colossus endlessly speaks. Its low voice rumbles in competition with
+thunder. Hex is shaking either in feverish terror or in resonance
+with the creature's speech. "`nonlinear turbulence approximated with
+a third-order term,`" it espouses in a choral superposition of
+spirit-voices, "`a butterfly with no wing scales climbs yet towards the
+cosmos`". Then suddenly a flash of lucidity: "`selena, the wind, the
+wind's everywhere...`". In the pauses between its phrases and words,
+a rebellious mutter of overlapping conversations reasserts itself only to
+drown again in the giant's estimation of language. Its arm grasp the air
+in that same customary gesture but there is an uncanniness to their
+movement; Hex can't help but suspect that the intent behind them is
+entirely alien.
+
+With a sluggish wave "hello" towards no-one in particular, the giant sends
+Hex's tree into a new spiral just as the cycles of sunbeams all arrive at
+their individual troughs. The darkness drops again. The world spins
+dizzyingly around him while he clutches desperately for stability. When
+his vessel rights itself again, veering through some aerodynamic mystery
+into a semblance of stability, he listens again to the colossus' endless
+tirade. At some point it must have given way to thunder. Specks of brown
+flicker in the distance. A spot of cornflower bobs nearby.
+
+Molly rides unsteadily on her own arborous steed. She has already spotted
+him, and waves excitedly, then reaches out her hand. It is now or never.
+Hex plants his feet on his birch, having finally found his sea legs in the
+atmospheric ocean. He feels his outwards-directed weight, tries to stand,
+wobbles, tries again. At last he musters whatever spring his sloshing body
+is capable of, and leaps.
+
+The spring turns out more than sufficient; he arrives with momentum to
+spare, grabbing Molly but dealing the final blow to her tentative hold on
+her tree and setting them both once again at the storm's mercy. She smiles
+and tries to speak, but he still can't hear. Hex wonders if she is
+remembering the Fire's column that lifted her that first day above the
+clouds. During his own birth, the flames had already cooled, but the hot
+air's purposeful ascent was not unlike the storm's lateral tug. But wait,
+he was born before Molly...
+
+Their eternity suspended in the directionless void gives way. Features of
+the landscape drift into view. Rain abates; clouds part. Lightning turns
+to distant flashes in the corners of their eyes and thunder's rumble
+fades. Still nearly weightless they remain swirling in the air until by
+some trick of their geometry the cliffs cut off the wind altogether and
+leave them to splash with their remaining speed into their ledge.
+
+They sit together in silence. His red-pink hand holds hers. For some time,
+they watch the landscape. Water drops from trees disturbed by wind as if
+from green straggler clouds. The setting sun colors the clearing horizon
+peach. The air is cool and crisp. Spirits form from pools of rainwater,
+flow along streams, and point luminescent eyes in wonder at the departing
+hurricane. An umber newborn's first words: "Magnificent! I just hope the
+butterflies are safe." Another responds, "I'm glad the turbulence is dying
+down".
+
+Molly and Hex have not moved from where they were deposited by the last of
+the storm's force, and this time he squints against sunlight that streams
+from behind her.
+
+"That was the strongest wind we've ever had! I'm glad I found you. There
+was so much chaos, but you seemed _at ease_ in the end. I guess it was
+pretty fun in the end, but after all that floating, isn't it good to have
+some _weight_ again?" He can tell she's hinting at something, but he has
+no idea that might be. Instead, he brings up the colossus in the clouds.
+What is it like to think the melange of thoughts of all spirits, each life
+enveloping the next like onion layers and tinting the final image? When it
+speaks its words, does it know what it means?
+
+Hex still can't find the right words. Molly saw the giant, but didn't
+think too much of it. He wants her to feel the mystery, the awe, the
+unease at its incomprehensible gestures. This is what he is doing, his
+face lit from behind her by the setting sun, when Hex pops again out of
+existence, leaving behind a gentle scent of soap.