It was warm and dark, inside the riduculously large cave. I looked at huge stalagmites jutting up from the floor like spears. I saw a man, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the cave, a fire burning beside him. I smelled something I couldn't quite place, something delicious. "Hello. What brings you to the cave of the shaman?" he said, waving me closer. I took a single micro-step forward, puzzled by this strange hermit. "I'm here for the Meaning of Life. I was told that you held it here." i said, trying to keep my voice steady. "Yes. But first,...
The Moon would never be the same again. No more bands, no more over priced beer. No more after prom parties.
But that really isn't any concern of mine. I always hated the place. It was where the worst times of my life went down.
The one that stuck in my mind the most happened because of a girl named Erin. I'd just moved to town and for some reason she caught my eye. I spent a while trying to get her to go out with me, but I couldn't ever get anywhere with it.
Then one day I got...
Her breath rose from her body in swirls of ash. The air wheezed from her as you would expect the air would travel through a burnt husk of a body. Each night she burned, crumbling into herself, waking in a bright fury with the morning sun. Some called her a phoenix, a goddess of the volcano, Pelée.
I was a lowly stream, trembling, trickling in her wake. The heat of her caused my innards to boil, and the creatures would leave me. The earth heaved with her breath, the tumbling rocks rolling, the sparks floating away with the grace of...
Mira had been blind for several years, but in a way, she never quite lost her sight. The smell of jalapeños sliced on the kitchen slabs made her taste green and itch with stinging eyes. The jasmine by the porch wrapped her in the white cream of Sunday clouds. The library books were still breathing dust and oil from the days they were salvaged from the great fire.
It was the fire that made Mira blind. It was the fire that Mira started. It was the fire that Mira conjured when she read from the black tome.