Campfires

Just a memory.

We're sitting on a light sheet, the only barrier between us and the sandy ground below. It's dark - the dead of night, or is it the morning? There's a fire, just a small thing, a little will-o-wisp that licks at the edges of the pieces of wood we feed it, but that never seems to be interested enough to consume them entirely. The sizzling and crackling of the flames sounds sparse and mute to my ears, like the sound of a light drizzle as it patters against the driveway pavement. In the distance, there is a small other brightness, easily forgettable, and behind us, rays of lights escape beyond the white plaster walls that mark the boundary of the house property. To my left, there is a lake, which every now and then waves to us, as if acknowledging that it, too, is perfectly content at this silent hour.

Everybody else is asleep or sitting inside those walls, chatting in hushed voices. I cannot hear the sounds that they make unless I close my eyes and focus on their voices, speaking familiar words. But I don't. I'm sitting with two other people, and a third is poking at the fire, breathing into the flames like one might breath into a particularly stubborn balloon, trying to coerce them into greater life and warmth.

They are speaking to each other, and I can only catch bits of the conversation. They are talking about the fire, mostly, I think, but there are other things in there too, things that do not go unnoticed by me, but that go unheard. It's in a strange, beautiful language that I can barely understand: a language that is scarcely comprehensible to me. I must reach out to it, freeze a word, and contemplate its possible meanings, quickly, before it absquatulates into some other unknown realm, and another sound replaces it.

And for once, I am not the speaker. I am the listener, the observer, one who is barely following the conversation, but who is understanding a great deal more than he thinks.

It's peaceful.