#is it renewal and rebirth turned destructive because of how much they’ve built on memory?

[mechanicalchickens]

Oh! That’s most certainly Mitzi, on first read I didn’t look close and thought that was Atlas’s silhouette. All the old crew are caught adrift in what was, huh.

Which means that which ‘makes light for dead eyes’ is the dead tree… does it represent Atlas? Or the dead husk of what he built, upon which Mordecai Mitzi and Victor project so much?

What is that veining the tree? Lightning?( the crackles certainly suggest so).

Or is it water ? a flood slowly seeping through the dead husk of what was built, until it all cataclysmically crumbles (the primary mechanisms of which would be ROT and slowly building water pressure, very thematically appropriate).

They’re in a desert, with a singular dead tree. a trickle would bring life, a deluge will lead to flash flooding and destroy the tree. But I’m not sure what water IS metaphorically in that interpretation of the scenario. I do know that the great flood of 1927 is coming.

There’s a storm brewing in the sky(which would bring WATER), maybe they’re all waiting for lightning to strike twice — that would make Atlas’s first entrance into their lives a metaphorically lightning strike, ultimately destructive. And if the tree crackles with energy, then perhaps that suggests that is what M&M&V are doing — living off the aftershocks of energy, waiting for another lightening strike even if that might mean doom.

Interesting, not quite sure what to make of it, except that living trapped in memory is unlikely to end well for any of them!