The Solace of Companionship

The smoke beckoned; its smoldering source was a billowing cube. Whoever built the bonfire used interlocking logs in an intentional pattern; each piece of thick timber rested at a slight angle on top of another. The center seemed filled with loose kindling and other combustible tinder. The scene was visible from a great distance, and the details became less obscure as we approached. I don’t think we intended to head toward the smoke at first, but it’s hard to say with any real certainty. Inexplicably, when walking long distances, you are often drawn towards something on the edge of your vision. I was laden with the bulk of the mission’s burden, and because of this, I was hesitant to venture too far off the vague footpath that guided us. My traveling companion, Leosh, was not as encumbered, and despite the relative freedom this afforded him, he too was drawn towards the rising ash.

The openness of the fields before us, in conjunction with the plains’ rapidly changing temperature, made our spring sojourn feel extremely volatile and uncannily menacing. There was no direct threat of some hidden danger, but what replaced this anxiety was an ever-changing, empty expanse. So, the beacon before us, although possibly a portent of some catastrophe of life, was still a welcome landmark. A campfire smoldering on these plains was mundane but unexpected; a bonfire carried a deeper meaning. The idea that this distant smoke could signify a pyre or some rite was not lost on us. Burning has an element of cleansing to it, but a cleansing of what? And how successful had this cleansing been? Pondering all these factors was a natural response, and although we maintained an air of caution, no heavy dread had yet settled on us.

Leosh, fleet of foot, unburdened and curious, sprinted ahead. He was looking for some new signifier, a sign that offered a clue to what occurred. I caught up to him on an elevated section of the grass plains. He had been staring for some time and barely registered my presence. A sudden whip of wind shoved his hair down over his eyes. A false part was forged, and then a white scalp glowed, peeking through his dark locks. He didn’t point in any particular direction, but I followed his deep brown eyes to remnants of an encampment. I say remnants only because the meager holdings appeared abandoned. No effort to pack up was visible, but none of the tidiness or buttoned-up nature of active occupation was present either.

“What do you think?” I asked without expectation of a reasonable answer.

Leosh answered deliberately, “I think they were in a rush to leave, but there is no sign of struggle or harassment. It looks like they built a large tinder pile, lit it, and fled.”

I thought about disease and plague. I wondered if Leosh had reached a similar conclusion. If it was, in fact, a reaction to pestilence that led to the fire and drove people away, we should steer clear, but I doubted my conclusion. What I was looking at didn’t seem like a scattering. It didn’t seem like fear or a bandit raid. The whole scene was controlled, a desertion without panic. It lacked the sprawling dash or the ramshackle desperation I had witnessed in other such cases. As the immediacy of the questions subsided, I noticed something else: The burnt ring spread outward from the center, forming an almost perfect circle. The perimeter of the singed edges was uniform, possessing a symmetry beyond nature’s accidental perfections.

“Impossible,” mumbled Leosh.

I nodded in agreement, although I was not sure we understood the same thing. Without further discussion, we doubled back from our raised vantage. We continued towards our compulsory destination, moving in lock step. Silently, cautiously, the pair of us, not knowing we were doomed by the ever-fatal human folly: curiosity.

As we closed the distance, visible human idiosyncrasies momentarily relieved our misgivings. The leather coverings and short lean-tos followed the expected non-patterns of countless other temporary settlements. The smell coming from the ash was only of burnt wood; there was no trace of fats or salts, and no perfumed incense or other non-traditional odors. Leosh moved from tent to tent with his usual fervor. I stood back and tried to take in the entire scene. Subtly, the intentionality of the bonfire revealed itself to me. I began to see gray edges of stone underneath the shadowy soot. A large altar or ziggurat had been built. The base’s platform was subterranean and rose, cresting just over the lip of the earth. What had struck me as so alarming and so very subtle was the completely alien closeness that the base inched toward a perfect circle. Given the relative isolation and separation from any large settlement, the effort required to build such a structure was incongruent. Leosh and I, through a forced pilgrimage, had stumbled on something that existed well outside our sphere of understanding. And more to the harrowing point, we had done so at a most inopportune time. Something of miscreation and sinister import had recently taken place at this site. Whatever status we held in our former world was meaningless. The two of us might as well have been adrift on a distant star. We might as well be drowning at the bottom of some primordial sea.

“We need to go,” was the extent of my articulation. Leosh halted his scavenging and directed his gaze toward me. I watched those brown eyes of his shift slightly to the left of where I stood. I watched as whatever attention my statement garnered vanished in a horrific instant of fresh assessment.

There was a slim patch of the white undershirt Leosh wore that flashed between his dark leather breaches and vest. This patch carried a bit of the rabbit or the deer’s protean behavior as he scuttled away from me and this site. I watched, hypnotized and betrayed. My eyes never strayed from the bright light that reflected the white surface. I forgave Leosh for his flight. The pattern he pursued was zigzag and clearly born from a degraded portion of his brain. He lost all sense and resorted to a fearful bestial nature. Whatever additional animal behaviors piggybacked on his cowardice were sure to be punishment enough. If my vision had allowed, I am sure I would have seen his very humanity split from itself. I would have seen manifest cravenness streak across those plains. Regardless, I was alone to suffer what came next. The full extent of this suffering is still unclear, even to me. I remain forever marred externally. A visible reminder for myself and all others, but the cost to my spirit and soul will only be revealed upon my death. A death I now fear more than ever.

Leaving any hope of the solace of companionship behind, I mustered the courage to turn around and see what had caused my hasty abandonment. By some heretofore unknown benevolence, I had turned at the exact moment required to momentarily save myself. Two black spots floated before my eyes, so close that they were blurred and distorted. I flinched backwards, instinctively. In this instant, I felt heat and coarse ash against the aura of my face. With my new perspective, I saw the greasy outline of a prodding claw. Two ashen fingers poised to submerge themselves into my pliant flesh. The prods were neither plant nor animal. They possessed a granular nature. I fell backwards onto my arched wrist and remained seated, waiting for something anthropomorphic to reach further. I looked upwards as this golem hand loomed. The ends of the claw danced and twitched with mocking carnivorous life, but the claw stretched no further. I followed what could be called an arm or a tendril down to that impossibly circular base. I expected a shoulder or neck to appear from this smoldering mound. A seeming serendipity arose instead. The plain winds picked up as I was prone, and the monstrous hand that stretched toward me was blown away. The black powder that made up the tendril glowed bright red at the start of the gust, but quickly and with little resistance, the particles were blown away. Throughout my travels, I hated the wind. I hated the howling and the incessant drag it buffeted forth, but in that moment, I silently praised it. I rose to my knees facing the ziggurat-like platform.

I closed my eyes in an attempt to block some of the debris and sand the wind carried. I remained kneeling before that ashy depression. The time passed by unheeded. Whatever relief I felt, and for however long I felt it, was shuddered away. The idea that the thing that grasped toward me was a one-time event was chiseled from my mind in drips and drabs. My heavy lids tore open in panic. What I beheld was a black rose-like fist quobbling upwards from the soot. It grew in gasps in fits. First to the sky, then making a sharp cut towards my position. Tri-pronged fingers protruded and elongated as the bulk of the tendril clicked and spanned, segmenting new length. When it reached me, it snapped like a frog tongue. Before I could get off my knees, the hand pawed down my face. The fork of hot ash glided from my hairline down to my chin. A gentle pull as my flesh stuck to the residual heat. With this caress, I lost all the strength left in my form. I slumped backwards, sitting on the heels of my feet. My shoulders dropped, and steamy dread aspirated in all directions. The cold burn that remained did not feel like fire; the heat was prickly, tingly, and the lines it left on my face pulsated with my deflated heart’s beating. I felt the skin above my facial muscles and bone shift and slide like sheets of earth. Pain was not the word; it was a different sensation.

I was now marked.

I heard Leosh calling my name as I walked away from the site. I did not slow my gait upon hearing my name. I don’t believe I could have slowed down, as there appears to be some new discrepancy in my gait: A noticeable alteration. I was too fearful to inspect myself or even ponder my deformities. Leosh would have caught up with me regardless. He was always so fleet of foot. I continued forward headlong into the stiff spring breeze. Leosh kept speaking and calling, and I heard familiar tones exiting his mouth. I felt a hand on my shoulder; it was a soothing touch, but bittersweet. I knew intrinsically it would be the last time someone dared to soothe me. By the time I had finished wheeling around to face him, Leosh was off again like a deer. Flashes of white zigzagging away from me. He did not look back. Despite the negativity of our separation, I still hope he reaches some desirable destination. I doubt that I ever will. Clearly, my new aspect will bar me from any settlement. I began the arduous prospect of resigning myself to my forever wanderings. Eventually, I will need to look at what remains of me. Or perhaps the alternative…Perhaps I avoid water’s reflective properties until I dry up completely. Perhaps I wait until the final screams of my agony crack my wicked tongue and this warped form drops to shrivel into these very plains. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.