Flame / Graphite
by R. Hyperion.
Flame is a specific color, mind.
Heavy in the air was the stench of rust and rock—and something else, unidentifiable. Even the wind brought no relief from it; only dry heat and clouds of dust that swirled around a chiseled landscape. Above the red plateaus those dust clouds formed a permanent haze that blurred the line between earth and clear sky. The night is moonless, a blue-gray so deep it edged on black. Straight above, a scattering of weak, ineffectual pinpricks masqueraded as stars.
They were drowned out by something in the east, so bright it scorched the ground and canyon walls orange.
Trails of gray wound their way through the valley toward the light, like threads tangling more and more tightly around one another until the path narrowed to a single rich black smudge. At the right angle, it shone.
It was graphite, that unidentifiable smell. Graphite powder, shod from the backs and feet and arms of a thousand gray-black beings. They dragged themselves before a towering wall of flame that stretched impossibly high—from a crevasse that ran impossibly deep. Heedless of the heat and the abyss, they shuffled in a ragged line toward a cave gouged into the north cliff face. Into the darkness.
…And out of it, bearing great boulders in their long arms. Graphite, which they heaped near pools of viscous liquid that seeped from the valley’s floor. Still more of them, armed with thick stone mortars, rolled stones into the murk and pounded them into an oily dough. Greasy trails led from each depression straight into the flame—and surely enough, one pair kicked and rolled an amorphous mass they’d been working into the chasm.
So it went. An endless cycle of pathetic meaninglessness. The miners dug from the earth, and the mixers returned their work to it.
Why?
A line of four thin shadows burst forth from the light, raced across the valley and immediately sank, clinging to their proper place under one thin hand. One of those beings pulled itself from the depths, newly forged from a hearth of life.
It rose to its feet, tentative without a wall to brace itself against, and gazed into the sky.
At me.
Glowing pits burned through a body that suddenly felt all too corporeal. The true power behind that eternal flame washed over me, too close for how far they were away. Like staring into a blast furnace. Blistering heat and light and hate and hate and hate—
It opened its mouth, bellowing rage, and a thousand heads lifted in unison. Two thousand piercing round lights, and I cannot look away. Hate and hate and hate and hate—
I awaken, shaking and drenched in sweat.
