dancing barefoot in the dark

It’s a lonely life. By now Mortimer, son of a dead fool and a fire dancer, grandson of a drug addict, had convinced himself he was used to walking alone through a demented world. He wasn’t old enough yet to comprehend the magnitude of his tragedy, but the weeks and months had taught him that pushing some painful thoughts to the back of one’s mind could soothe his aching heart for a time. Until eventually his plight became more like that of a sad story accentuated by the constant crying of another land’s dead God. The old Sun God was a woeful travel partner. He traipsed behind, a pitifully animated figurine, tiny and weeping. Always bloody weeping! Mortimer couldn’t even look at the sorry depiction anymore. Instead he tried to keep busy, wandering here and there, doing his best to avoid the twisted ideas of a sick world, all whilst seeking a meaning, a purpose, a something.   That and he was desperately doing everything he could to avoid his grandfather, the old fool’s tendency to not make sense and eat strange things unnerved him to no end, though he couldn’t deny that he was a little bit curious. d’Artagnan also smelt weird and Mortimer didn’t want to know why.   He’d gone westward, not purposefully, but the mist this way was disorientating and the young reddened colt was hopelessly lost in his wandering. He clung to the fluorescent glowing, to wherever light lingered, trying to find a pathway out to something that might be clearer and feel a little less menacing. Instead he found himself wandering towards an ostentatiously large tree, burnt and broken, Mortimer couldn’t even fathom the largeness of it. The closer he got the more his autumnal coat took on a darker hue from the shadow it cast, and the more he got an inkling into what it might be called. He didn’t know why, he hadn’t even thought about what the tree was called, or so he had thought, but he just knew that here he stood under the barren branches of Uwaritace. Why he needed to know that who knew… He didn’t even know trees had names.   “What do you think, Sunny?” he asked of his crying figurine, who said nothing, bowed his head and wept some more. once upon a different life we rode our bikes into the sky

art by emeraldthewoof