Flicker of Departure

Smoke curled like whispers along the stone lip as the sixth flame took hold, thin and hungry, lifting its saffron tongue toward the moth drifting in circles of amber hum. The floor beneath told its own hymn: pigments arranged in fractal obedience, their scent mixing chalk’s dust in the air with the bitter-sweet sting of spent matches, a taste one could almost hear. Someone had inked a plea on the post — not loud, but devout in its insistence: *Where Vojta?* The letters cut into midnight like a pulse, each flicker insisting on belief. Field note—2304 hrs: perimeter dark except for these low bowls burning steady; exit hinge warm, recently handled. The hands we see, urgent yet reverent, treat fire as both altar and signal. Everything feels staged for flight — not decoration but invocation, as if light could wrench open a path. Still no movement beyond the threshold, only the moth and its little orbit. Vojta’s absence remains an ache, sharper for every new flame we kindle.