fiery wind

This is not how I imagined this night. Wind humming in our ears, blazing fire swallowing the trees. We’re still holding hands, not stepping aside even for a bit. The carcass of a dead rabbit is laying in the center, untouched and strangely clean. One of us lets out a little cry, the fire is creeping up to our feet, threatening to take us to itself in the cycle of heat and flashes. For a second, our quiet whispering stops, resuming again with a frozen fright in our eyes. The wreaths on our heads are disheveled, the flower petals fell off, they look as if they can’t hold for another minute. When we went to the monthly ritual to protect our homes from them, everything was as always: an empty glade in the middle of a dense forest, twinkling stars, cold grass, a necessary sacrifice and long-rehearsed words. But the words were spoken, our hands were clenched, the songs were sung — the rabbit did not darken. It didn’t turn into an unintelligible black lump, the grass around it did not dry up, the red eye was still staring into nowhere. And then it started. The fire, quickly flashing between us, rushed to the nearby trees, surrounding us with a red wall. After that, everything turned into incoherent chaos. We whispered everything we could, we raised our hands to the sky and bled, we intertwined our fingers and begged the flowers. There was another scream from the side. The whispering stopped, our legs froze in indecision. It seemed like the world had disappeared. And then the fire rushed at us.