Quote:
When the Fire Works (14) : Innovation is expected in Destiny City, so seasonal commodities are always expected to sell well. This year, the hot new summer item includes some chemically enhanced logs: carefully modified with environmental and health-safe chemicals, these logs are guaranteed to burn bright, burn long, and burn beautifully. It’s not just a pretty flame: each individual log has several rings that will light up like a sparkler when the flame hits. Larger logs will even pop off small, colorful fireworks for several hours while they burn. Though the lightshow is beautiful, it’s also calm. The logs have a pleasant, earthy smell, and unlike the sounds of normal fireworks, these simply sound like a crackling fire. There’s something curiously nostalgic about these fires; they are able to elicit a sort of childlike whimsy, if only you let them. If not, it’s still pretty.
Most of the more rural inhabitants of the areas outside the main Destiny City metro would probably call Indra a ‘city slicker,’ and despite the grimy-sounding title, Indra would absolutely not say they were wrong. His preference was, in fact, to be close to amenities and convenience. He hadn’t really moved out into the forests near the reservoir with any knowledge of what it actually meant to live outside the city, but he was forced to for safety concerns, and there was no going back now. It sucked.
It was pleasant in plenty of ways, but more difficult in others.
There were no distracting car horns or pedestrian scream fights out in the middle of the woods. No lights shining through the blinds at all hours. But the internet was a little bit shoddier (or it would be without Mauvian technology), and no amount of pest control would keep the bugs from invading. There was also no one to come collect the garbage. ‘Too far out’ for the city to do it. Which was something Indra had never even considered as an issue when he moved out here.
Fortunately, he still worked in Destiny City, so it wasn’t like the dump was more than an extra stop on his way in. But the less he had to ferry around in his car (read: not a truck, so substantially worse at ferrying great quantities and also he had to put bags of garbage in his enclosed, carpeted trunk), the better.
…It was apparently acceptable to just pile certain portions of your trash up and burn it.
Enough refuse had collected around the property that it was time to do just that. Did he completely, one hundred percent, without a doubt know what he was doing? …No. Was it safe? Probably? Nothing bad had happened any time prior. Was he doing it correctly? …Look, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to. The trash was gone, and that was the most important thing, as far as Indra was concerned.
For this particular session, he wanted to try something a little different (which was generally not his favorite thing, but if it meant less work, he could suffer something new). Indra had collected some special firestarter from the outdoor store. It was probably not really meant for trash burning; he expected its allure was more for a fun and interesting night at camp. But the firestarter was supposed to burn hotter, longer, better than just collecting some dry grass. And if it was meant to do all that, why wouldn’t he make use of it? Indra required no fancy show to accompany the chore, but he did value efficiency; he wanted this task to be over with as quickly as possible.
So that was that, decision made. He set up his experimental logs in the bottom of the barrel and dropped a bag of (probably) appropriate garbage on top. A little flick of his lighter in the small opening in the bottom to get things going, and- Well, the starter caught without issue, that was always a positive. He might as well get himself situated. Couldn’t leave these things unattended, you know.
He had a folding chair set up nearby, and just in case it was necessary, the hose wasn’t far away. Indra mostly scrolled his phone while he waited, only ever keeping a half eye on what the fire was doing, but he could see extremely bright flashes of white and color through the little hole at the bottom of the barrel. Most of the top was obscured by the trash on top, but even then, Indra was very aware these were not the usual logs he used. Did it… did it even smell nice? Did burning trash smell nice because of these logs?
Genuinely, what a spectacular investment. Maybe he should bring some to Antisana with him.
Although, given the setting of inside a cave, fires were generally frowned upon…
If it was more open… He could get to parts that were, but it wasn’t the main Knight residence, or even close to it. But given that he had to bring anything he wanted to use, be it food, hobbies, or comfort, he did accumulate quite a bit of waste on his Wonder as well… It would be nice to have an easy way to dispose of things.
Even if Indra was afraid to get rid of nearly anything on his Wonder, as it had all existed well before he ever had… But he enjoyed tidy, uncluttered spaces, and there was indeed a surplus of random debris from the… thousand years or so that no one had tended to Antisana. He’d made a point to clean up after himself when he visited, but as far as fixing anything went? Where was he even supposed to start? It was his wonder, but plenty felt liek it wasn’t his to touch because of some ages-old-importance. It was just that not everything could be important, right? He should be able to rearrange (or dispose) of things that had no purpose…
But probably not with fire.
The self of his past life had been almost as neat and tidy and minimalistic, so it was really a matter of upgrading to the current times and providing the amenities that Indra was so fond of. He just wished there was someone he could speak to about it to learn more. Other knights were visited by the ancestors, or even people they had known in their past life, but Antisana had always been empty. The only thing he could look to was memories of his past life. And a truly horrific amount of the strongest memories were just crippling loneliness and depression and darkness, a dread for the future, fear, no end in sight, and the farther forward in time those memories went, the more Indra started to think Antisana’s sanity had started to… slip.
If he received memories based on past Antisana’s strongest emotions, it was wildly and overwhelmingly negative. It definitely made it feel like living a bit away from the city was not so bad, and maybe he wasn’t living as rurally as he could’ve been, if he’d been born some thousand years earlier…
[WC: 1040]
