Monday, August 24, 2026

Akai Inazuma A: The Nights of Summer Days

DATELINE: Paulie’s Shore, Sixteenth Stratum, Fourth Dementia, Sub-Demential Iteration A

As the Red Lightning avows its brilliance, a call goes out for celebrants to hit the water: “À l’eau, c’est l’heure!”

  The handful of people dashed down the moonless sands shedding clothes as the soft crash of breakers kindled the sea sparkle under their feet. Whoops and hollers eased with Poseidon’s warm embrace as the revelers hunkered in the briny shallows.
  George looked at KA. With the distant light of the beachhouse he could see the quiet waters lapping against her shoulders, her hair an inky sheen in the intermittent flash of Red Lightning.
  She turned to George as they drew close. On her face a faint smile grew and he could imagine her brown doe eyes lock onto his gaze even in the dark.
  KA breathed words of gramercy and favour, a summing of esteem from afar, heretofore unspoken. George lay his palm on her shoulder, still warm from the afternoon sun.
  He leaned in and shared a confession of limerence that was almost drowned out by his thumping heart. KA cupped her hand against the nape of his neck and slowly pressed her lips against his. A light tang of salt, a slight whiff of coconut. A charged warmth coursed through them both as the peaceful rhythm of the low tide gently swayed in the night. They held each other, floating as one, as the Red Lightning abated and the babble of celebrants drifted beachward.
  Hand on handa, the twain strode in through the receding surf. Each step in the sand sparked an electric blue flicker, the sea sparkle communing its benediction as Poseidon’s envoys...

  In the Fourth Dementia George and the Belamour Anadyomene prosper ascendant, processioning onto the plage under the awakening Eos Erigenia and walk off together into the sunrise...
  Unlike Dementia III, there is no Tobacco Road movie for George to suffer through here in D.IV. Third Dementia George and the respective KA do cross paths, give form to the sands, and share a midnight immersion.
  Geometers and magisters still posit theories of how parallel or causal events cast influence across multiple dementia, as well as the furcation of orthogonal timeframes, hoping for answers.
  Pfft. What do they know about love? Or dreams?

Thursday, July 23, 2026