The air beyond the glass reeks of Samhain. The charge of gunpowder peppers the air as the season’s fireworks creep from hibernation. I imagine them crawling out of the rich chocolate mud from beneath a sea, tealike, of rotting leaves and crunching twigs, their snouts sniffing at the unburnt air before they shriek like banshees towards the stars, scorching the earth with sparks and smoke as they fly. I sit, hear, and smell the air, listen to the distant thud of reds, whites and blues creeping in from the cold between the gaps in the window. I sit here and my head is spinning in a mad, oxygen-high dance. And I’m going nowhere fast, the lyrics say, but it’s okay. It’s okay now. This is Samhain, Halloween, the eve of ghosts and spirits. This is the night of the dead, the end. This is the thirteenth card, poised inevitable between the magician and his trinity of cups, almost spilling their mulled wine in their eagerness for celebration. Nothing is eternal. Full moons now burn brighter than new ones ever did before, and magpies have taken the place of ginger cats. I see them everywhere, everyday. I see them watching me. Tonight is the eye of the storm, the last dance before the big push. This is the day I know things will begin to change. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know that this is when it begins. I can feel it, as strongly as if the planet had shifted its poles. Again I smell fresh gunpowder in the air, like the last shot of a musket. Now there is only the silence. This is a war. This was a war. This will be war. Everything in our universe is in conflict, save for this one peaceful moment, breathing in the sway of a slow Autumn candle, glowing like a thousand suns before me in the dark confines of my manmade room as I stare, and stare, and stare, until the world beyond - its weather and their war - melts into one glorious nothingness, enveloping me in a breath.

Today you are ten thousand sunrises and ten thousand sunsets, ten thousand pirouettes around the Milky Way. I hope you never stop dancing.