The flames speak.
Each crack a noun, each snap a verb, each sizzling hiss an adjective. All part of a language no person can comprehend, part of an infinite chain of echoes that has been flaring and dying since that first bolt of lightning kissed the trees in the Earth’s infant years.
Interconnected, but not a hive-mind. Sentient, but not sentimental. Alive, but not quite living.
The flames sing.
They repeat every story ever told to them, mimicking the words and waves that thump out a beat for their endless dance. They absorb and become those stories, fueled by the tales and their troubadours, perpetuating the oral tradition with burning lips.
Every campfire a ghost story. Every grease fire a spitting satire. Every bonfire a Homeric odyssey.
The flames rage.
They’ve seen it all, those eyes in the inferno; the wars of steel, the wars of hearts, the wars of gold and greed. They know our history as it is their own, and lash with red-hot whips against the conflagration of our culture.
Unable to stop us. Unable to tell us. Unable to do anything but burn us if we get too close.
The flames die.
Their energy dissipates, leaving only the light of elder embers and the chants of a slow dirge. The heat leaks, and with it the story, warming the air and ground and soul of the planet, sprouting into new fledgling flames somewhere in the unseen distance.
In every flick then lick of fire or flame a word and idea. In every human eye a reflection of the glow. In us all a burning need to tell.
Literature and Libation 