small pilgrims

Frey stands up, placing one hand on his stomach and one hand on his matted hair. Blood throbs in unknown corridors. He closes his eyes so you can't see him. Nostrils flutter in the breeze, a bellflower blooms on the meadow. Frey stands there like that for 97 hours. He dies. Body preserved, glossy and true, sculptural posture and potbelly.

Small pilgrims arrive, deploying balsa wood shops, taverns, prayer halls, bath houses, libraries, workshops, love hotels. Everyone spends generously under Frey's shadow, a circular nativity economy, no one getting rich or poor on each other's money. A wheezy pilgrim, kryz, invents a song you can sing at Frey's toes, or any set of toes. As three pilgrims she's never met sing the little diddy, squeezed snugly between Frey's big toe and hairy second, kryz speculates a breathless future for herself. You can hear her muttering if you pass close by: "Marrakesh, 368, Dallas, 85, Wuhan, 222, Seoul, 16, ah, Bologna, 100..." Tallying her fans, calculated and inevitable.

At noon, a hole in the sky takes a peek at the sun and casts a brilliant beam on Frey. A meaty hand tans in real-time, but the hairs that escape it sparkle like golden mercury. Everyone stops below to Witness: mid-transaction, mid-bite, mid-pickpocket. There are skylights in all but the most amateur structures, cut for this moment. They're just holes, honestly. By this time, a delicate dust of decay has settled on most things, but the pilgrims don't mind, some find it quietly intoxicating. And regardless it's worth it for this moment of Glory. A pilgrim in a hot tub, eeber, rubs his soft hair with his palm as he stares up, visualizing it glowing just the same as Frey's.

The moment passes. Darkness that once passed for illumination resumes. No one returns to their book, their intercourse, their accounting. They just look around at each other. Empty, sorrowful faces, locking eyes.