They lived in a dark world, in a remote corner of a remote island where they found refuge from the bombs and the bullets. It had been years, decades maybe. At some point, the elders gave up on keeping time, believing it to be a worthless concept — when the end is so constantly near, your priorities change and certain ideas of how a civilized person should live, time being one of them, were left behind buried deep in the rubble and debris of lost cities and past lives.
The encampment included no more than a few hundred people including families, couples old and young, and stragglers, but it had less than half the amount of shelter needed to provide for all. Days were dark and grew even darker at night. The skies swirled in black and sickening clouds keeping away the light. The sun, hidden behind a facade of sulfur and pain, was an object of the past reserved for nostalgia and children’s stories. Fire was once again primal and vital, more now than it had ever been in the past.
Although calendars and clocks no longer found a useful purpose with the people, time was still celebrated. A ritual developed among the elders when, at certain times, they would hold up a torch and start singing loudly while the fire blazed above their heads. This call for attention was just the beginning and was meant to gather attention. They lasted for hours and the bonfire often burned for days. Often it…
The colony gathered around the elders with the torch — all eyes on the fire. It was a magnificent time. It was this ritual of fire that kept their time not in a chronological sense but with a much more meaningful significance. This was a time for inspiration when hope burned hotter and the coldness and sorrow of the present and the past were pushed away, if at least momentarily.
All gathered and lifted their eyes upon the fire. Children were made to sit quietly and look. The were made to sit and imagine a world without shadows, a world that shined brightly from dawn to dusk. And they did. As the elder swung the torch and shared the fire with the other elders, the children along with their parents would gasp in surprise and enjoyment. They focused their eyes on the balls of fire.
The warmth of the flame increasingly grew more intense. The spectacle continued to do what it was meant to do — if only for a moment, hopelessness was revived and the human spirit was once again ignited from a spark. These fire dances gave light for them to see what was possible or what could be possible. It illuminated not only their surroundings but also their minds.
For Marrick and Jenna it was different though. Instead of focusing on the torches and the bonfire, on the sources of light, they focused on each other. As the strong yellow and orange light burned away, their eyes searched each other’s faces. Not only with their eyes they also searched with their hands.
Marrick held her face close sometimes gently meeting her forehead with his own, breathing deeply and quickly pulling away to trace the contours of her eyes, the bridge of her nose, the curl of her lips and up again towards her eyebrows. Passing his hands through her hair and pushing it back, he looked at her thin neck and the burn scars that found its way down her shoulder and her back. He looked at her shoulder before bringing his hand back to her chin again to hold her face in his hands.
In a way, while the fire gave others hope for the future, it gave them the freedom to see each other. It gave them the opportunity to appreciate each other and they spent that time not in embrace or holding one another with eyes closed but in complete honesty, holding each other in regard and searching in anxiety the other’s face for words a thousand times spoken.