bonfire night

The things about Bonfire Night– and there are a few, not just one– the things about Bonfire Night to Pyra were fires and spectacles. She had always loved the fifth of November in Caer Sidi, if only because she got to watch people while also feeling warmth across her cheeks– now painted, then bare, regardless the nature of fire is heat. Pyra liked watching people, seeing how they moved and interacted. She kept little quirks tucked in a pocket space in her brain, thought about how she could fool them. Misdirection, of course, but sometimes a special Something! happened with a stranger’s posture or movements or words that turned them into another magician right in front of her.

When Pyra was five, she went to a bonfire in the park with her father. One of the last times she saw him happy, the memory bittersweet, like baker’s chocolate, like specks of a sparkler on the tongue. Something something conjuring fire. Something something eating fire that one has conjured.

Which she couldn’t do without burning her mouth. Even though she tried. That is not the nature of her stage magic. But she had tried, once.

When Pyra was five, she and her father played with sparklers and watched the fire reach its fingers up to the night sky.

–Check this out, Pyra!

He started a sparkler in one hand then closed a fist around it. When he opened his palm, the fire and stick were gone in one.

Pyra thought about that frequently when she hung around the treeline at Bonfire Night celebrations, keeping her eyes on the others, children laughing and running around pell-mell, parents chatting or chasing after their spawn. The fire big and broad, the trucks selling food.

She reached for her playing cards, wrapped in paper and twine in her frame-swallowing trench coat’s inner pocket. Pulled one from the middle, the honey-colored back painted vivid in the light of the bonfire.

–Is this your card? She thought.

Queen of spades. A woman doubled with crown and scepter. She slid it back in alongside the other cards.

The trees rustled above her– the leaves hadn’t all fallen yet, the wind warping the top tendrils of the bonfire into a rapid dance. Pyra removed her hand from her pocket, pushed off of the tree. Tapping her golden fingers together for the satisfying clink. Covering her chest slit by closing her coat. But she couldn’t particularly hide her inserts– no, they were visible.

What would her father think of her as one of the Calon Ddi-waed? She couldn’t help that she wanted to live forever. Maybe because he couldn’t.

She liked to dwell less on this and more on her magic. He had taught her the three card monte as a baby. He had believed in her when nobody else had.

The things about Bonfire Night– again, more than one, because Pyra was multifaceted, Pyra was a magician with a quick hand and an Unbleeder with a honey lance– the things about Bonfire Night to Pyra were memories and flames.