Try A Dragon Again
A flash fiction piece about seeing shapes in the flame. An outtake.
The flames are gold against the deepest blue of the evening sky. Shina sees shapes in them. Ghosts of her village’s dead. Ancestral spirits of her family. Sometimes even dragons — the creators of Shina’s people, who know the answer to every question ever asked.
Shina feels they all try and whisper to her through the fire. Ghosts. Spirits. Even dragons! But they disappear way too fast. She can’t understand them. Yet they never stop.
Shina concentrates, doing her best to help a majestic, swirling dragon keep its shape in the flames. There’s a flare — and she fails. The dragon is gone.
She tries again. She focuses on the sparks first, slowly lowering her gaze to the flames. She can’t control who or what appears. All she can do is try and help the apparition hold its shape, its window into this world.
Now there is a glimpse of an old woman in the fire. A faint smile passes her face, and Shina smiles back at her, cautiously — then a flame jumps up, and the old woman is gone.
Shina doesn’t give up. She keeps trying. For hours. Again and again.
The Moon comes up, adding a splash of soft silver to the sky.
Shina takes a deep breath, ready to try again. Then she lets out a sigh.
“Do you think it’s important?” she asks her brother. “What the flames say?”
“The flames don’t talk,” her brother replies, a little impatient. “It’s just your imagination, sister. Be glad some things are simple. Keep them that way. Life is complicated enough already. Simplify.”
Shina smiles, softly shaking her head.
“Silence isn’t simpler, brother,” she murmurs. “It never was.”
Her brother vanishes, back into the fire.
Shina decides to let the flames flicker out, finally. It’s time to get some sleep, under the soft, starlit black of the night sky.
She did it. She talked with a ghost, finally. With her own brother! She doesn’t believe him, though.
She wants deeper and truer answers. And for those, she’ll have to try a dragon again. Tomorrow.
