maybe you were the ocean

A fire is burning, somewhere.

It likely isn’t close. Wane can’t see the plume of it spiraling black into the open skies, but the air is hazy, thick with smoke and the earthy smell of burning wood. A strange, heavy mood (not quite violence, and not quite sorrow) settles suspended in the meadow air, accompanied by eerie silence and almost akin to the electricity you can feel in the air just before lightning strikes. 

The sunlight here has become orange like the flames, and here and there it reaches through the haze with veils of light that reflect the illusion of more fire when they hit the grass just so. Wane is standing at the river’s edge, leaning casually with one heel cocked, as he often was. The grass around him looks alight, but isn’t. Breathing in the smoke and ash makes his throat swell and itch, but he has no intentions of leaving. He had hoped to stand at the water’s edge and people watch, but he might as well have come at midnight because he is the only one for miles, it seems.

It could almost be peaceful in a backwards sort of way, but there’s a moment then where somewhere deep in the forest, between the pines, Wane thinks he can hear screaming and that extinguishes it.