A Thousand Pounds of Smoke

...covered the world, that fog, that haze.  It's the kind of smoke that chokes out color, that somehow diffuses the sound of the light and makes you wonder if you're alive or dead...

...and the smoke didn't bother me, because I was breathing it out.  Every exhale and my horns grew a little more, my teeth sharpened on my tongue.  There was a Tigerwolf at my feet, and she raised her head a little as the smoke swirled a bit faster than it should have...over there, across what may have been a cramped little den...

...she stretched her legs, but didn't pick her body up.  Her ears were up, and as I took a deep breath I felt something else's heart beating in that small square space where the thousand pounds of smoke had made its home...

...felt my blood pumping harder, faster.  My fingers got sore then, like I had been holding onto something too tight, afraid to let up on the throttle maybe.  Something stirred across the smoke field from me...over my shoulder the moon watched her favorite son through the swaying, lurid shadows of the trees that had grown around the den...

...a light, there, somewhere in the smoke.  A light that throbbed and moved, that pulsed and...danced...

...shit, there's something there...someone...someone I didn't expect to be there, in the smoke that I breathe.  Someone who somehow penetrated the fog I cast around my life.  The smoke parted then, with the same strange rhythm I heard in my veins...

...pale skin and scattered red...heels that clicked and horns to match my own...she came towards me as I inhaled the smoke that parted in front of her...as I inhaled all that she is...

...and in the morning, when the sun burned away what was left of the mist, I found sweat on my tongue and blood on my teeth and I knew I wouldn't have to breathe smoke anymore...

Comments

  1. A man once once gave me his Art and signed it with "HELL IS SAN DIEGO."
    I didn't understand it at the time....but now I do.

    The Deep Ones still do dance in waterfalls.

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