18 | Psychopomp Magazine
man beside him. He walks in a circle past us, and he looks each of us in our eyes. Before he looks at the boy, he places a giant hand on the top of his head, atop his mother’s. He stands there for a full minute like this, and then he looks the boy’s mother in her eyes, and she grows warmer.
—- peers into the boy’s face. His eyes are green but beautifully, miraculously clear, and the boy knows that this is the green that has hibernated inside of his chest, and now it is stirring and he tastes grapes on his tongue and sees his mother smile at him and feels the warmth of the fire more terribly than ever before. —————-, the boy realizes as the colony throws more questions to —-: Why won’t you answer us? Do they exist? Do they? Do they? Tell us they do!
Thirty minutes ago most of us had given up on the very last of what we believed might exist outside of them and here is —- in front of us and now we don’t even have what we thought we were searching for. For the love of —- tell us, please! The boy has no more questions for —————— who towers over the fire, over the RVs, over the planet and the Milky Way like a ribbon wrapped around the moon. And we don’t care to ask anything more.
The fire grows brighter and we hold our chairs to it, and we roar at it, and rain like tears starts falling but the fire gets hotter, bigger, and he backs away, afraid of us and our burning chairs that we hold above our heads and throw at him. The boy starts toward him and —————-— —— — —— ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— We are writhing, our dedication broken, and nothing will ever be able to replace it. _____________________— — —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-————-Our voices ignite in the rain. Everything is red and