we will make you think hurricanes are gentle, that pain is a gift. you will get lost in the desperation, in the longing for something that is always reaching but never able to hold
I notice him because he looks like I feel.
Overwhelmed; as if every chaotic nuance of the event is something he is experiencing for the first time. I watch, at a distance, because I do not know what to say if I were to speak. He has four wings where I have only two, but he is younger, I think. Sometimes, the bodies of other patrons limit my view: I find my world is obscured by disjointed, fire-cast shadows; by the limbs of adults, gargantuan in the setting; even by the sound of conversation and the breaking down of fires.
I can smell only smoke and clean, spring air. I already miss winter. I already miss the snow—
But I am not here for snow. In fact, I don’t know if I should be here at all. I am sure mother is worried—and I hate to worry her, I do, but the walls of Terrastella have felt too oppressive, too—
I feel like a bird that cannot fly. And so I came to the fires; I flew long and hard and fast until the festival opened up beneath me and I felt like a small god. Tonight, I am pretending to be anyone but myself; tonight, I am pretending to be the wild girls I met or Leonidas on the cliffside. Someone other, someone who—
Someone who can start a conversation without nervousness getting the best of them. I weave my way through the crowd in pursuit of him; the closer I get, the more I recognize the uncertainty, the anxiety; the more I recognize his energy above the energy of the crowd, a chaotic and dark thing. I want to ask, do you know, I feel what you feel?
Not on an empathetic level. But one more primordial. On the level of his soul, of his energy—it is cackling and black and escaping his body. I hear, phosphorus makes blue-green, calcium makes orange, sodium…
“Sodium?” I ask, softly, from just a bit behind him. “What does sodium make?”
I have no idea what he is talking about, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to matter.
I breathe in, and out; and do what I can to not let the energy effect me. Gatherings are the worst. Gatherings, no matter how much I meditate or prepare, make me feel just—
Well, just a little unhinged. It does not feel so severe, however, when I am regarding someone else’s struggle.
"Speech." || @Ambrose
