Notes from the Burning Age

by Claire North

It is enough to turn the crimson world grey in moments, to bring hypothermia after heat exhaustion, until even your burns are shivering.

Grief never leaves, but life layers itself on top of the pain, time forming fresh scabs over bleeding wounds, no matter how much we wish we had stayed in the burning forest.

You do not fix grief; there is no pill. You only wait, and be there, and let time pass.

Brotherhood members painted crimson murals of the fat Medj of the city and the fanatic, emaciated hermit of the south screaming at each other, spit flying from their grotesque, curling lips.

People believe what they want to believe. Tell them what they want to hear. Social media moves faster than fact-checkers, so as long as you . . .

Humans are hard-wired to find the worst in a situation, did you know that? It was how our ancestors survived, expecting tigers when there were none, expecting disaster so that when disaster finally came, they were prepared.

we have always blamed ourselves for the very worst that the world must offer – blamed our sin, our wickedness, our evil ways.

when there is good in this world – when our hearts keep beating because they are strong, when our limbs return to life because we are young and vibrant a...

thank anyone but ourselves and dismiss pride as arrogance,...

knowledge, it seems, does not yet triumph ...

In the burning, the human mind was trained to value achievement, ambition and ownership above all else. It was the most abundant the world had ever been, and yet every child was taught that it lived in scarcity

Perhaps all I’d done was turn a short war into a long one.

They wanted to make a better world.” She thought about it, then shrugged. “Who doesn’t? But as my old Medj would say: there’s wanting something, and then there’s being a dickhead about it.”

“They worked in sewage treatment before getting spiritual. Really good priest, terrible gossip; you know how it is.”

I ran to help, like an idiot, oblivious to the danger of another blast, saw a leg bouncing against the shoreline like driftwood, saw a crimson slick like oil dispersing in the salt, and a round-eyed fish turned belly up from where it had perhaps been nestling in the shadow of the now-shattered pier.

“If you don’t go to the temple, why are you sheltering me?” I asked. “Our people have survived thousands of years,” came the answer, and that seemed to be enough, all the explanation that was needed.

“I have seen the kakuy too,” I said, and surprise flickered like the first spark in a fire before he hid his face again behind a bored smile. “Belief doesn’t really come into it.”

“I always had you down as a seaside kind of man. Rolled-up trousers, an oversized tome about philosophy in dappled shade while drinking fruity concoctions.”

He blinked at me in surprise, bewilderment, then gripped my arm a little harder. “Are the kakuy punishing us?” I sighed, laid the dish to one side, rinsed it clear. “Deforestation often results in mudslides. Humans and kakuy are born from the same ecosystem.”

Temple has an inquisition; is there not a kind of confession there, an admittance that even the gentlest of doctrines sometimes run hard into a crueller reality?

a punter, hungry, cold, looking for something to blame. “If it saves one of our boys’ lives, it’s worth it!

Put on a pair of shoes, and for a moment I fumble with the laces and can’t quite remember how this is done.

Stay alive. Hope is a trap. Sorrow is self-pity and unproductive. Watch the night; stay alive.

Yoko did not move but held her empty cup between two hands as if its lingering heat were the last embers of a dying star.

To drown starts as a constriction in the throat, a closing in of the chest, a popping of final breath from nose and mouth, as heaving, heaving, heaving as you swallow down the need to swallow for air,

“Why I joined Temple!” Lah would say. “Tea, nice music, decent architecture!” “And the devotion of your life to awe, gratitude, compassion and respect?” “Yes yes yes – all that stuff too.”

cyclists swore and cursed and wove around each other to the jingling of bells and cries of “Move, idiot!” and reproofs of other locals who knew that there was no place for rudeness on their streets and would shout obscenities at you until you understood that fact.

Occasionally they partied, incredibly loud and incredibly drunk, and in the mornings after would wake, diagonal across their beds or the beds of their hearth-kin, and pad tip-toe across the hall to their own rooms, and find each other’s socks in their washing for weeks to come.

Pray for yourself. Pray for something worthwhile. Pray for good things to happen. Pray for it to be all right. Pray for hope. Pray for forgiveness. Pray for yourself. Be someone worth praying for. Useless bastard, pray. Empty little eggshell, pray.

“Council is too political. You come, you go. You have short memories and short-term goals.

I wondered what “frisky” could possibly mean when two armies faced each other over the black-dust belly of the earth, and decided not to ask.

Cockroaches would be fine, they always were, and probably form the basis of new life.

The kakuy of Martyza had not cared who it killed, the day the sky caught fire.