Foxfire

I couldn’t hear anything. Nothing. Why couldn’t I hear anything? The fire enveloped me. I couldn’t feel the flames licking my flesh from every direction, as if it could not stop itself until it reached my very core, scorching my soul. I was blinded by its light – streaks of gleaming white and pale yellows, searing my eyes. I knew I was burning, but why couldn’t I hear it. Its crackle and pop grew hungrier in the moments before the beast lowered his head and rammed his skull into my chest, sending me back into the starved flames. But now, my body the midst of its flames, it was a vacuum.

And then it blew out in a single, sudden burst. Poof. Like a birthday candle, its flames twisting into delicate wisps of smoke.

I didn’t move. I lay still, unsure of my body. Unsure if I even had a body anymore, or if I had been reduced to a pile of ash and my mind was momentarily lagging before it joined my body in death. I lay there watching the white smoke curl straight up toward the black sky. I dared to lift my head to survey myself. I did not see anything. When I looked down, I saw the glimmer of an outline of my shape. My legs bent at the knees and dropped to the right, as if dreamily sitting down for a picnic. But for the faint outline though, they were shadowy, almost undetectable against the black soot beneath them. My gaze rose upward, scanning the rest of me to discover the same ghostly condition. I held my arms out in front of me and I could barely make them out. It was difficult to even place them. I brought my hands close to my eyes, trying to orient them in a way that would help me see them. It’s not that my hands were caked with earth, or even ash. They were ethereal, transparent. But so perfectly clear. Like glass, my shape defined only by the night’s reflection off the gossamers that held me together now.

I rose up, stepping away from the center of the fire. The sky remained clear and black and starless. It was still night. The trees slept, their leaves still but for those that murmured above where the fire once was. The woods surrounding me ominous, the darkness impenetrable. I was careful with my steps, taking caution not to stumble, unsure of my steadiness. It was then that I noticed that I could see the ground beneath my foot. Precisely beneath my foot. I could see through my foot. I tried lifting and placing my foot over and over again, unable to meaningfully discern where my foot, my leg, even was. I was lost in the dark.

Panic. That’s what this feeling was. Panic. It washed into me with the force of a tsunami. I could not see myself, could not find myself in these shadows. How do I take my next steps, how do I get out, what am I even getting out of. I was trembling now as I tried to put one foot in front of the other, guided only by the memory of what it felt like to move. I approached the tree-line quickly, having been in such a small clearing to begin with, and realized the struggle I faced having to navigate the woods. With no meaningful ability to do so. I had no idea where I was, or where I was going. I only knew I needed to move.

I moved blindly through the trees, banging into branches and thicket and brush that I could not see in the night and could not avoid even if I could, without knowing where I was putting my arms, my legs, where my body was as I moved through these woods. But through the foliage, I saw something bright. Lots of something bright. Scattered and spotty, like stars in the sky except not stars and not in the sky. A glowing emerald green. Straight ahead and all around. I hastened, clumsily, without regard for the increasing scrapes against my body from the bushes I pushed through.

As I got closer these glowing lights seemed to grow larger, more numerous, and more enchanting. I hurried, finally arriving at the black rock wall that held these handfuls of light. They were all shapes and sizes. Some large and fanned out with veins running through them. Others stumpy and clustered together, like sea coral growing from the damp crevices of the monstrous black stone wall in front of me. The radiance they gave off was unnatural, but beautiful. A glowing, electric green. I instinctively reached my hand toward one, careful not to burn myself, and discovered that despite its bright light it was cold to the touch. As I pulled my hand away, remnants of its bioluminescense remained on my hand, leaving a soft green glow on the pads of my fingertips.

I leaned my back against the wall and slumped down, scanning the forest around me. My legs and arms burned from the scratches I suffered moving through the woods unable to see where I was. I stared at the green light on my fingertips, mindlessly rubbing them together when – wait. I could see my fingertips. The emerald glow left behind from the foxfire was like a dusting on my hands, outlining my form. I could use this, take this and cover myself in it to move through the night, to see myself. I began grabbing as much as I could, blindly clawing at the cold, wet rock wall and stuffing the fungus into my pack. As I did, I could have sworn I heard a crack. Not a thunderous rumble, more like a sharp, shooting crack. Like an ice cube when it’s dropped into warm water. As I continued to stuff my pack with the only light in these woods, the cracks came quicker, sharping, more piercing. Something was breaking. I looked up at the tremendous wall in front of me, tying to find it’s end but it bled into the darkness of the sky.

As I did, the wall before me dropped, turning to water.