A burning metaphor
Fine fingers twisted bits of wire and wood together, in her hands something with an odd shape was forming, something like a cone that looked as if perhaps it had an extra dimension. Flower was dressed in a pretty black dress, of the type that the Sijanese funeral priests dressed the bodies of the children of the wealthy.
The Flower that Will Never Bloom (Flower to some) held the strange sculpture up. It was almost as large as she, though the ease with which she handled it made it clear it was light.
“What are you making?” Orphea asked.
“It’s a metaphor,” Flower said, in a clear, high voice.
“For what?” the Lunar asked.
“The cycle of rebirth.”
“You can model that?” Orphera sat up straighter from where she rested by the fire to look closer at the object.
“More or less,” Flower said, then gently bit at her lip, “more less really, but it is as close as you can get while sticking to three dimensions.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
Flower smiled and walked over to the fire, then, carefully, hung the cone like object above the flames, its wide mouth facing the fire. “It’s a test.” She was obviously proud.
“A test?”
Flower nodded. “Plan A for removing the underworld,” she said.
Orphea said nothing as Flower took bits of paper, twisted to look like people, paper dolls , and placed them around the fire. “The only think that really touches the cycle of rebirth are souls, so I’ll have to prepare them, and put them around Creation.”
“So the fire is Creation?” Orphea asked, looking at one of the paper dolls. It was quite well made for such a tiny bit of paper.
“The wood is creation, the fire is essence, and the ashes are the underworld, metaphorically speaking.”
“Of course.”
“The sparks, they are like the souls.” She tossed a piece of green wood on the fire, causing a cloud of sparks to rise up into the cone.
“I see.”
“But all they do is travel through it, and are cleansed, they don’t affect it.”
Orphea nodded, seeing where it was going. “But your specially prepared souls will.”
Flower smiled prettily and nodded. “When they die, exactly.”
As if on cue all of the ten paper dolls she had placed around the fire went up in flames, and rose, burning embers, into the cone, where they touched the sides and set the structure aflame.
“And now I have kick started the cycle of rebirth!” Flower said happily, loudly, striking a pose that was possibly supposed to look brave, but instead looked foolish (or adorable), seeing as she stood there in her child’s burial dress.
The flames continued to climb, somehow forming a vacuum and as Flower and Orphea watched the rush of air pulled the ash from the fire, spewing it up into the air and the night breezes. And then there was just the madly burning wood, sitting on clean ground.
“Take that you Neverborn sons of bitches!” Flower screamed, lisping as she did so.
Orphea looked a little shocked.
Then the cone flared brighter, the entire construct collapsing and falling into the fire.
The two stood there, quiet for several seconds.
“Flower, did you just destroy the cycle of rebirth?”
“Metaphorically.”
“Was that supposed to happen?”
Flower frowned. “Let me check my notes.”
One would have to look hard to find (if they even existed) a set of notes (on a mix of pastel papers) that detailed such advance concepts, in such a childish scrawl.
Orphea looked over Flower’s shoulder as the young woman looked through her notes. “What’s that,” she asked, leaning over to put a finger on an odd drawing.
“That’s a ducky,” Flower said, and then, “I mean a duck. I mean, shut up.” She hunched over the notes to hide them with her body.
Orphea took a seat across from Flower as Flower continued to go through her notes. Finally Flower put the notes aside, tucking them into a bag at her side.
“Well,” she said, “I am sure that the real cycle of rebirth is much more durable.”
“You’re sure?”
“Ninety percent,” Flower said confidently.
Orphea sighed and put her head in her hands.
