When All Strength Is Gone, There is Fire

When all strength is gone and your body can take no more, rest your eyes a little dear one. We have pushed together, you and I, through forest and thicket to the cold rushing stream. The water is rushing down the rocks, won't you bathe and let your cares drain for a moment?

You say you can't laugh anymore. You say the flowers don't shine for you, that the trees are dull and limp in your mind's eye. Your hand trembles as you try to render the sketches that were once fae in your hands. Your fingers wove the stars in our youth, but now you watch as the stars implode, crushed by eternal night.

I don't know how to heal you. There are no doctors for maladies of this sort. We are in the woods, the hidden woods surrounded by the will of the wisps. Can you hold out here, in the virginal splendor of our ancient home? Or is it true that even here, in the heart of hears, you are weak?

I am bringing you a bird. It's wings are flapping so fast you can't even see them. It hovers like it is suspended by a gossamer chain, and if you close your eyes and listen, you can hear a little buzzing. Will this help your mind take flight? Will this clear the air?

But all you can see is the tired fragility of the bird, the brave struggle against gravity and the weight of a planet's doom. You tell me of parasites and mites, fungi and infections, and the coming devastation of the drug-resistant plague. Your bird crashes to the earth, its limp wing still fluttering slightly, the lower wing hooked at an unnatural angle. Gravity is a cruel master, you say, and it wears on our bipedal form the worst.

I take a fold of flowers in my hand. See! Here are daisies, here are peonies, look, a daffodil and a tulip. I gather lilies from the pond, my hand skimming the water with the waterstriders. Plants do not defy gravity, they do not fight or struggle. They grow, massive and round, around all obstacles. They reach for the sun, waving their flowers in silent worship of a forgotten god. They clean our air, bury our rot, clean the world even when she is so poisoned that life itself despairs.

But the axe comes and chops down the trees. The flowers are trimmed, they stand regimented in internment, ornamenting some gravelly drive seen twice a day between meaningless job rotations. The grass is sheared, the herbs called "weed" and plucked out. Even plants must fall. Even green things must fail. The world is but spinning dust and matter hurtling towards a fiery death.

Then, my love, let us look at fire. Fire grows, it licks and sputters and slakes its thirst from all over the world. It strides, relentlessly ambitious, across the world, afraid of nothing, demanding everything. Even metals cannot resist. It changes all things, binds all things, rebuilds all things in its image. And it is beautiful, the living dawn, crackling in reds and blues and oranges and greens, glowing late into the night. Fire is magic, the heart of magic. In its husky glow you can dance under the endless fires of the sky, your feet burning holes in the ground, sparks jumping from your pounding rhythm. Rise, my love, and dance! Fire is reborn, birthing the world over and over, consuming its progeny.