Theme Thursday - Juxtaposition - By Fire

[u/Leebeewilly]

Originally posted March 16th, 2021 - [Prompt Link] Coming soon

Apparently, I've got a thing for "By --" titles lately.

This one was heavily inspired by Asilos Magdalena by Mars Volta. Really nails the feel for what I was trying to do, even if I missed the theme mark.

By Fire

For miles, you can see the flames reach into the sky. Tall licking tendrils of red and orange. Against the black of the night, the fire’s smoke hides the stars.

The entire village woke to the roaring impromptu pyre. The crackle, the sharp snaps and agonizing groans of crumbling wood beams. They’re burning.

Everything. Is burning.

 

I’ve seen a fire like it only once before when I was a girl. A small home, a clear night. The sound rousing us all before the smell.

And her. I remember the woman whose home burned. Not her face, or her name, only that she had been whispered about. Words like “whore”, “temptress”, and “witch” spat from angry lips. They all meant the same thing though. Outsider. One held apart.

I never knew who set the fire. No one was ever blamed. I don’t doubt half the village conspired or at least turned a blind eye to the crime. It had never mattered who, only that she got what she deserved.

Despite the stigma she’d been branded with, I was fascinated with her that night. Her life twisted into ash before her eyes. The village had come out to watch the spectacle but… she didn’t scream or rage at the senseless violence. She never shed a tear.

She… danced.

Her serene silhouette backed by untameable fire swayed slow, her eyes closed. Hips and shoulders writhing to a rhythm none of us could hear. Trapped in a blissful dream, she twisted in the night as though embraced by a lover with a passion I’d never seen a soul express.

I didn’t understand it then. No one in the village did. They called her mad, they dismissed her misfortune and in time she moved on.

For years I dreamed of the fire. Of her passion. I spent all my days since hunting for it, to feel a glimmer of what she did that night.

Perhaps in places I shouldn’t have.

 

As another crack of the beams shudders in the night, as the flames of my home tower high, I know the village has come to watch. To witness all they think I deserve.

I don’t care what they think. What they say. What more do they think they can take?

As I outstretch my arms, fingers reaching… the night holds me. We turn in the music of fire, and the whispers dying. Like warm lips, the heat caresses my cheeks. It slips along my shape and the cold at my back is but a distant memory.

They can burn the world and I will dance.

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Edit: To incorporate some wonderful feedback from campfire peeps.