Clouds, Attic & Hearth — Conversation A

Hearth: I feel it is time; I’m merely embers. I am cracking, breaking.

Attic: I would agree. It’s that time of night. The drafts are rapidly chilling up here. Clouds? Are you there?

Clouds: Always. I am here to listen.

Hearth: I feel empty. There are only charcoal and charred wood. I cannot rest.

Attic: I feel cold, dark and isolated. I cannot rest.

Clouds: Ah, you are each shackled. Hearth, your shackles are the Attic, forever above you and Attic, yours are the Hearth, forever beneath you. You struggle to acknowledge that you are in a feedback loop of currents.

Attic: How so? Why can’t we rest?

Clouds: In many ways, Attic, I am a poet. You are a scientist. Hearth, you are an empath. An empath and a scientist together, are very much poetry. When you breathe with my poetry — the currents of the warmth and cold in the air, you can exist in the magic of my words. Your shackles lie in your inability to breathe with each other, feeding on the wind as I dictate its motion. You are both needed to feel it. You need breath from each other to rest. You cannot fight each other for it.

Hearth: But we have not slept because we do not have words to speak to each other. Perhaps the question is, should only Attic sleep? I have worried about such a thing, as the Attic is so cold and empty above me. Attic, I burn helplessly to direct my warm air to you, through the pipes and ceiling, as your own cool air sinks through the damp cold of the floorboards, weathering the beat of my fire.

Attic: I do not feel it. My brick freezes in the night and insulates nothing.

Clouds: Hearth, you and Attic both you must rest. Attic, Hearth cannot rest unless you limit the seeping of warmth, even in your draftiness. Until you do, you cannot rest either. Notice the erratic rap of the open shutters. Close them.

The brick began to warm, and the air began to melt. Attic breathed long, cool wisps around the room, which warmed with each inhale and exhale. Hearth’s embers began to spin gold once again.

Attic: I can feel you, Hearth!

Hearth: And I, you!

Clouds: You may rest when you pause to mingle, mix, converse and lean on one another. Only together, you may follow the balanced path of the current I have crafted for you.

Listen to an audio version, here :)