The night is as calm and alive and fierce as ever.
Do not race the fire, her mother had told her. She watches them all gather around the flames. She has not seen her mother since she let her go into the forest with the other children to collect pieces to throw into the fires. That feels like ages ago. It was before the forest, before the man, before the embers.
Do not race the fire, her mother had told her. And so she does not race, she walks with a quiet grace that can only be a gift from her mother, but the way she seems to roll herself through the shadows, so unafraid, so bold, that is from the father she has met but does not know. She calls him Dall for his eyes covered in bandages. She will paint him she thinks, when the morning comes and she wakes from her bed. She will paint the eyes underneath it before covering it with bandages. She will paint the moon on his shoulder and think nothing of her own marking from Caligo.
Do not race the fire, her mother had told her. She moves to where they all line up, the fires set ablaze in a path as if just made for her and her alone, and suddenly her world grows small. The smoke comes and it covers her eyes and she pretends that this is what it is like to be that man with the bandages on his eyes, over his eyes. She thinks she can beat the smoke, she move past it and see once more, and maybe one day he can too, out run his own smoke made of bandages and blindness.
Do not race the fire, her mother had told her.
But she said nothing of racing the smoke.
Elliana
@Official Dawn Account
