OD 2.22.2004 [11:43 p.m.]

this is my favorite of jess's. it's just AWESOME, the final image that lingers in your mind of the fire just radiating out concentrically from that one point of contact.

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It happened that there was, in a land made almost entirely of asphalt, concrete, and oily puddles, only one flame left in all the world. The flame was jealously guarded, and it never blew out; because of the way the buildings all around it were built (mostly of concrete) no breeze could ever find it, and the air was still. High, high above, so high that it almost redefines the word, there were a few, scattered stars on very clear nights, but those nights were rare, and the flame couldn't see them. It was shielded from the sky, anyway, to keep the oil-stained, acid-tainted rain from falling on it. Insofar as flames know things, the flame knew itself to be entirely alone, burning because that is what flames do, and one day don't. Insofar as flames might be afraid, and they aren't, it was afraid of going out.

Everyone was afraid of that.

There weren't many things in this land, besides buildings, the people who lived in them, and the great, sleek, silver sky-ships which stroked the poisonous skies, from which one could see the stars. There were some cats, and some dogs, and some cockroaches, and there were caged-birds in cages within concrete buildings too monstrous to comprehend.

And there was also one, single moth.

In all of the land, the thing the moth most resembled was glass. Its wings were coloured all in greys, like dirty moonrises, polluted water in the purifier; its wings were threaded with pale, pale gold veins. Against concrete, against asphalt, its wings were translucent, were ghostly. It resembled glass, too, insofar as it was extremely fragile, and didn't like the wind.

In all of the land, there was only this one, glass-like moth. All the others were dead, or gone. Which was all for the better, people thought, when they thought about it at all, which they didn't.

There were still poetic metaphors and scientific documents about the attraction fire holds for moths, and how dangerous it is. But the moths had long told stories about light, about flame, amongst themselves, and the single, lone moth in the land was the inheritor of all these stories, about the dangers of fire. The truth was that moths do not feel a passion to the light or the fire. They are not attracted to it at all. Fire sings, the moth knew, from moth-stories, told by moths who were dead and preserved in glass-cases, sung by moths who were long dust, and moths who had flown away, in the night, to places the moth could not comprehend. Moths are not drawn to the fire.

Fire, though; flame.

Fire is, has always been, drawn to the moths.

It was while the sky burned, sunset's colours, and the rain fell on the cool, colourless city, and the moth flew into the space made by buildings, cunningly planned, which was free of the rain and the sky, that the moth heard the last flame left in all the world singing.

The moth knew the stories. The moth knew the dangers. The moth knew, it remembered, the danger of following that singing, but not one of the moth-stories was about escape, so the fire reeled the moth in. It flew, ghostly, transparent, above the oily puddles, overbrimming with water sluiced from other parts of the land, and it was too small to cast a reflection.

Finally, it alighted on a concrete pillar, not far from the flame.

Insofar as flames can speak, can sing in words, the flame said, You, at last. You.

And insofar as moths can speak, the moth said, I heard you singing. But it's not me. Stop it, be quiet.

You, the flame shivered, oh, you. I know you, the flame whispered, come here.

Trembled, the moth's glass-fragile wings, and it said, Shut up, shut up, for flame is to moths as siren is to Oddysseus, Just, just.

Come here, the flame said, oh, come, come, I'm alone, I'm the last, and its singing became low, too low for any but the moth to hear.

And the moth said, Who am I?

And the flame said, without knowing what it meant, death, I know you, you, and a final time it said, come here.

There was never any choice, and unwillingly, the flame singing bewitchingly, the moth fluttered across the asphalt, the oily puddles, the concrete, and its shadow flickered everywhere, and it haunted the flame, came hauntingly closer, and closer, and close. What happened then was to be expected, because there's always been such thing as too close, and neither metaphor or science lies.

The moth came too close, and moths are fragile things. Its wings blackened, its wings twisted like silk underwater, and all that took an instant, and the flame drowned itself in moth-wings, and, smoking and black, the fragile, dying moth fell to the ground.

It was very dark, in that moment; the moth died, and so did the fire, and so the moth fell into a puddle, and the puddle hissed and quenched its smoke.

But the puddle was iridecent, filthy, oil-slicked, and in the instant the moth, and the remains of the last flame in all the world, hit the puddle, fire flamed out like shining from shook foil, it smeared itself on the oil, which veiled every puddle. The flame ran from puddle to puddle, until the entire city, the whole land, and all of the world was set afire, and it burned, and it burned, and it burned.