than a foot tall.
As if to some unheard music they began to dance and spin, twirling around in skirts of flames across the water. Sharp and fast movements their arms and legs punching out and kicking to the sides.
Each fiery figure darted about the water causing ripples to spread out, small at first and then larger until the entire surface undulated with micro waves. The waves shifted and curled, folding in on themselves as they gathered together into their own glowing faceless and featureless figures. They pranced around the water in fluid happy movements much different than that of their fiery counter parts.
The fiery figures seemed annoyed by the water figures dance. They stopped in place shaking as they watched the water figures skip and hop across the pond surface their ripples causing the ones created by the fiery figures to mesh and collide. The fiery figures heads turned to each other nodding in agreement before at once in a flash they darted across the pond. The water figures didn't see them coming as they shoved past them. Their fire hissed at the contact with the water filling the scene with steam.
The water figures paused in their dance watching cautiously as the fiery figures spun and spun until I felt as if the world itself was moving. I clutched the wood beneath me letting the pain of the bark bite into my hands to ground me. I'd never seen anything like the sight before me. When Ayden had told me it was once in a lifetime I'd thought she was exaggerating. My guilt of leaving had been pushed to the side from the vision of the dance before me. I thanked whoever might be listening that I'd decided to stay for this.
"Keep watching." Ayden was sitting up now, her eyes on the dance before us. "The best part is coming."
I turned my gaze back to the pond, searching for what might happen next.
The fire and water figures were in a standoff of sorts. Each one of them doing their own form of dance trying to outdo the other. A rumble beneath our feet startled me but one look around the pond and I relaxed. No one else seemed bothered by it.
The fire and water figures battled it out on the open surface unaware of the growing ripples bubbling up from the center of the pond. A darkness pushed against the surface, pulsating and fighting to the top. When it broke the top, a large glowing green figure with wings made of leaves and branches spread out the length of the pond. The mother nature type figure loomed over the fire and water figures. They stopped their fighting gaping up at the giant before them.
The water figures scrambled over themselves pushing past the fire figures to get closer to the green giant. They cuddled up to it, letting themselves be absorbed into its form, allowing the green giant to grow bigger and stronger by their sacrifices.
The fire figures though were different.
They stared up at the giant with awe and fear but not many went closer. Those who did venture toward the giant burned it wherever it touched. The giant swatted at them knocking them off their feet and into the watery depths below.
When the other fire figures saw this, they grew in form and anger, charging at the giant as one. The green giant batted at them like buzzing gnats but there were too many of them. The fire overcame the giant burning it down until there was nothing left but burnt earth left in the middle of the watery grave of their friends.
Then one by one the fire figures sagged and slowly walked into the water, letting it envelope them as they hissed and bubbled out of existence, leaving us in complete darkness.
Silence filled the clearing and then a sudden thunderous applause erupted. People hooted and hollered. Someone lit the bonfire back up and the clouds covering the sky were blown away.
I shifted to the others a mixture of emotions in my chest. It wasn't hard to figure out what the whole performance depicted. The battle of the angels versus the fallen. The green giant was meant to be God. However, the ending was what stumped me. If the fallen found God to be the evil, then why did they seem so sad at the end of it all?
"So, what did you think?" Zephyr turned to me with a curious smile.
Shaking away my philosophical thoughts, I smiled back at him.