The Pyre

The heavy wood I carry bites into my shoulder. Every branch and bole we can drag to the pyre is meaning. (click-replace: "meaning")[meditation] (click-replace: "meditation")[prayer] (click-replace:"Every branch and bole we can drag to the pyre is prayer")[ It is done.] (click-replace: "It is done")[The curious thing about fighting [[shivers|Shivers]] is ..] (click-replace:"....")[sometimes, when it’s all said and done, there is not much that [[remains|Remains]] which shows the monsters even existed. Though I think there is a poetry in it. The world is always working to cleanse itself. It’s a reminder that healing will come. When healing comes, it is worth it to remember that there are often scars. Likewise, even though the shivers are gone, evidence of the battle always remains.]

(colour: red)[(text-style:"fade-in-out")[Anger]] makes a sound that only it can hear, though it is seen in the world, by the People, as oily and seeping, and made of pain. These are the dreams of the [[Woe|Woe]] sleeping far beneath the world. They gnash and thrash in nightmare turmoils (mouseover:"turmoils")[ $s[(it hates you)] ] of bad ideas unccomfortable in their own [[skin|Remains]] and trapped in the strands of The Hoop, longing for the Quiet. (mouseover-replace:"longing for the Quiet.")[(text-style:"blur")[longing for the Quiet.] ] Clawing and wounding their way through the deep darkness, they eventually cause the earth to vomit them up into the night where they rush out to feed on the hopes of the Peoples. (set: $s to (text-style: "shudder")) (set: $b to (text-style: "blink"))

(either: "My mother. I couldn't look at her. She had been rended and bent in ways foreign to her body's structure. Something had tried to feast on her and left warped skin that stunk like meat rotting just beneath the surface of the swamp. We gathered to reassemble as much as we could. The work was made more difficult through constant tears, clenched jaws, and my breath trapped somewhere deep in my belly. Eventually, I placed her on the [[pyre.|Pyre]]", "My father lay, at the mouth of the wooden gate, his flesh sloughing off like loose clothing. It had tried to drink him. A black jelly, all that remained of his innards, steamed and hissed in the sunlight as it dripped from tears in his flacid skin, from orifices, and tips of his fingers. My stomach churned, and my heart heaved, as we rolled and folded the bits of him into a basket which we dragged to a [[pyre|Pyre]].", "Had I not been on a hunt I would have been there for my children. Rather, I would be there, with my children, a mess of bones and blood mangled just as my heart and breath were now mangled in my belly, dissolving into a wave of tears and heaving sobs that streamed uncontrollably from my body. I could not find the mindfulness to separate their toys from the gore of them as I brought them to the [[pyre|Pyre]].", "Sobs and sobs and sobs and silence as we fill the [[pyre|Pyre]].")

The hiss and pop and crackle of the fire began to sound like whispers of stories and laughter to my ears as sparks, and the black smoke of burning corpses, flew to the sky releasing the spirits of the fallen to begin their travels back to [[Makocewakan|Makocewakan]].

We watch the sun descend. We breathe deep. We remember and count the faces as we prepare to survive the night. [[End->Beginning]]

(link-reveal: "Rage")[ (link-reveal: "Pain")[ (link-reveal: "Struggle")[ (link-reveal: "Reduced")[ (link-reveal: " unseen")[ (link-reveal: " quiet")[ (link-reveal: " f e a r")[ [[ burning|Pyre]] ] ] ] ] ] ] ]

(link-reveal: "Rage")[(either: " slimy", " goopy", " Slippery")]

=><= [[The Pyre->Curious Thing]]