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