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mutantblues · 12 days

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It’s the 24th of June, when one of the wagon-wheels breaks. Somehow it feels like an outdated problem, but everything in this corner of Bavaria feels a little outdated, so maybe that’s just fitting.

The travelling Jahrmarkt comes to a full stop just short of a small village, and the people start filtering out of the wagons and carts to solve their little problem and stretch their legs. Kurt wishes he could join them; he spent all day cramped up in his mother’s fortune-telling wagon, and all he wants is to walk around.

But their arrival near the village doesn’t go unnoticed for long, and soon a handful of villagers, drawn out by the sudden commotion, come to check on what is going on. They seem like nice people, striking up conversation and offering help, even though it is not needed, but Kurt is still Kurt, and mother reminds him to stay in the wagon and not come outside. The nicest people can turn horrible, if they get scared.

It’s not like the wagon is extremely uncomfortable, but it’s hot and stuffy, and the summer sun burns down on the Jahrmarkt with a vengeance. If Kurt could at least open one of the windows. But mother insists, that that could be dangerous as well. What if one of the villagers gets curious and throws a glance inside? Stay inside, stay quiet, stay unseen.

He should be used to it by now. And maybe he is, but it’s not easy, and it doesn’t get easier.

Through a crack in the old wood, Kurt can see Stephen and Jimaine. A boy from the village has joined them in the overgrown grass next to the road. He seems to be around their age, maybe a little younger, but neither of his siblings seems to mind. They are playing catch.

Kurt bits his lip until it hurts and tries not to be jealous.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair! But somehow nobody seems to care, what a small blue boy considers to be fair.

By the time the wheel is fixed, evening has rolled in. The sun is setting and one of the farmers offers the Jahrmarkt to stay on one of his fields for the night. Free of charge. Truly nice folk… Kurt still wishes they would leave.

When Stephen and Jimaine come inside again, they are flushed and out of breath and smiling from ear to ear. Kurt tries to match their energy. He’s not quite sure that he succeeds. His siblings tell him what they learned from the village boy.

There’s a celebration tonight. In fact, there’s a celebration in the entire area Johannisfeuer, they call it.

Jamaine says that all through the night a giant fire will burn, but she can’t exactly tell him why. Truth be told, Kurt doesn’t really care why. He imagines dancing flames on the hillside behind the village and knows that mother would never allow it.

His suspicion gets proven right, when Jimaine asks their mother later that evening, if the three of them can go have a look. She insists that they would stay in the shadows, but mother still forbids it. The Jahrmarkt is only staying for one night, they need to get in a few extra miles the next day, if they want to make it to their next location in time, so they will have to head out early. And besides, with Kurt there, it’s far too dangerous.

And so, after dinner and completing their chores, the children get sent to bed. Kurt hears Jimaine complain about it, but Stephen tells her that at least they got to play outside, for a bit.

The uncomfortable feeling of jealousy rears its head again.

It’s stupid, Kurt is well aware of that, but he still makes a decision that night. Once he hears mother settle in for the night, he slips out of the wagon and vanishes in the shadows between his travelling home. He will get in trouble for this, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

The village is dark and eerie. Like a ghost town, with not one lit window, it lays in the darkness of the night. But when he strains his ears, Kurt can hear the faint sound of laughter carried on the wind. Using the shadows to his advantage, the boy finds his way to a road that leads up the hill. Houses line the road on both sides, but they get more and more sparing the further up he gets. The laughter, however, gets louder.

Kurt passes the last house, at the very top of the road, and finds himself in front of a meadow. The grass is dry, and even in the darkness, Kurt can make out that the long grass is more brown-grey than green. The road continues to his left and right, but Kurt doesn’t pay attention to the paths that diverge. He is too captivated, by what he sees further up the hill. There, on a section of the meadow that has been shortened drastically and is lined with a few water-tanks, is the fire. It’s tall, maybe not quite as tall as he imagined in his youthful fantasy, but still taller than any fire he has ever seen before. Silhouettes of people linger around it, talking, laughing, having the time of their lives. Kurt wishes he could be one of them.

Ignoring the paths to both his sides, Kurt steps onto the dry grass. It scratches the skin beneath the fuzzy fur on his legs, and he can feel small seeds get stuck to him. He doesn’t care. Keeping the fire in a wide birth to his left, Kurt makes his way further up the hill. Always making sure that he stays far away from the firelight's glow.

He finds a tree, close enough to the light, that his eyes still allow him to see what is going on, but far enough that it’s not in danger of being ignited by the fire, that dances against the night sky. Without thinking too much about it, Kurt teleports onto one of the lower hanging branches. The action makes him dizzy. Teleporting upwards feels weird.

He perches on the branch, his tail wrapping around the rough wood as an extra measurement.

A bunch of foldable beer benches and tables have been put close to the giant fire. It seems like the entire village is gathered there. They laugh and talk and drink. They lean against each other, lean over to other tables. Kurt wonders what it would be like to be among them. The Jahrmarkt people can be a rowdy folk, but Kurt feels like he is witnessing something different here. An entire village of close-knit people, instead of just a small Caravan of misfits and those who strangely want to be them.

His attention is pulled away from the people around the tall fire. A few feet away, sits another fire, far smaller, much more manageable. Three beer benches stand around it, and on these benches the children. They’re holding sticks over the flames and when Kurt tries really hard, he is sure he can smell the scent of roasting dough on open flames on the wind. The children seem engrossed in their own conversations. Kurt can spot the boy that played catch with his siblings among them. His cheeks are red in the glow of the flames.

He is holding his own stick pretty low, and Kurt watches as it dips under its own weight and the dough lands in the ash at the bottom of the flames. A few of the kids snicker, but the boy insists, that it’s still edible. Kurt wonders what the dough must take like.

Next to the boy, a girl shakes her head and declares loudly that she is the best at making their food. She pulls her own stick from the flames and proudly presents it to the others. Kurt leans forward on his branch. He wants to see. But when the girl triumphantly goes to peel a piece of the bread off her stick, the dough turns out to still be mostly raw.

The children around her laugh – not mean, just amused by her bolstering attitude, only to fail – and Kurt can’t help but giggle with them. But he clasps one of his hands in front of his mouth, as he does so. He can’t be seen, can’t be heard after all.

The night continues, and with each passing moment, Kurt finds himself more and more enamoured by these people. He has only known them for a few hours, but he starts to feel like he belongs to these people, that do nothing but laugh, talk, have fun and drink beer.

When he closes his eyes, he can imagine that he is sitting among them, with a stick of his own in his hands. He can pretend that he feels the heat of the fire on his face and the laughter of the other children in his ears.

But it’s just make-believe, play pretend, and Kurt is reminded of that every time his eyes stray from the fire and find his three fingered blue hands tightly holding on to the branch underneath him.

Still, Kurt remains. He watches as one of the younger boys takes his stick and holds it up like he is leading a parade. Other young ones join him in his procession, and soon they are walking around the benches in single file.

A few of the slightly older kids, barely teens, confiscate one of the foldable beer tables. They turn it into a slide and the children take turns sliding down the wooden surface. It looks fun.

Kurt watches, as two teens steel away from the fire, they walk hand in hand into the darkness, just past the tree he is hiding on, and Kurt presses himself as far back as he can get in fear of being seen. He can hear them talk about running away together, and silently wonders who would ever want to leave a place like this.

His attention is pulled back to the smaller fire, when screeching laughter reaches his ears. The kids have made room, all of them standing back and in surprising unison chanting a name. One of the older boys stands at one end of the fire. There’s a confident smile on his face, as he seizes the flames in front of him.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize what he is planning to do. Kurt crawls to the edge of the branch. His finger’s tightly holding on, as he tries to get as close to what is about to happen as possible. Hopefully the boy will manage to jump over the fire.

The chanting gets louder and louder, and – an angry yell drowns the kids out. A guy is marching over to the boy who has the other kids so riled up. He is tall and brought, and he angrily grips the boy's forearm. Waving a finger in front of his face. No jumping over fires in this night, Kurt realized, and curiously finds that he is a little disappointed by the fact.

Hours pass and with each Kurt tries to remind himself that he has to go. He needs to return to his wagon, or he will be in big trouble. But he just can’t bring himself to leave. He can’t let go of the sight before him.

The villagers, however, can. The later the hour gets, the more of them decide to call it a night until there’s only a handful of them left. They finish the remaining beer bottles and start the process of distinguishing the flames. Dawn is still a little bit away, but the sky is already starting to brighten in the east and Kurt knows that he has to leave now, now, now! Or he runs the risk of getting spotted, but he just can’t bring himself to do so.

This may as well be the only opportunity he will ever get to experience something like this. A moment like this may as well never come again. He has to stay.

The final men leave, and Kurt can count his lucky stars that they didn’t look in the direction of the tree he is perched on. He watches as their backs retreat down the hill.

By the time he finally slips off the tree and dares to step closer, there is nothing left of the fire. Only a few pieces of charred wood and ash remain, silently waiting to be cleaned up, when the villagers have recovered from this night of drinking.

He passes the tall fire, or the scorched earth that lay beneath it, and heads right for the spot where the smaller fire had burned. The slide the children fashioned out of the table is still there, collecting moisture in the early morning mist, that clings to the grass beneath Kurt's feet and makes his fur stand on end. Kurt lets his hands glide over one of the benches that still stand exactly there where they had stood during the night. It, too, has taken on the moisture. It’s wet and cold, but Kurt sits down on it anyway. A lone stick lies next to it, forgotten sometime during the night. Its tip is charred.

Kurt bends down and picks it up. The stick is thin between his fingers, but he simply closes his eyes and holds it over the ash that remains of the small fire. When he concentrates, he can smell the roasting of the dough again, he can feel the heat of the fire flicker over his face, almost too hot to be comfortable, and he can feel the comforting presence of other children around him, sharing a bench with him, their shoulder’s pressed together. He can hear them laugh about something one of them said.

But then he opens his eyes again, and the spell is broken. There is no fire, not roasting dough, no kids that want to be his friends. There’s just a lonely blue boy and the charred remains of a beautiful fantasy.

Kurt sighs, he drops the stick in the dirt and stands up to leave. The moment of last night is over, it will not come again. And maybe that realization is why he stops after a few steps away from the fireplace and turns around. For one moment he simply stares at the scorched earth, then he begins to run. His feet leave the grassy ground and in one mighty leap he clears the spot.

Despite the loneliness that gnaws at his heart as he makes his way back to the field where he left his family, despite the fact that he has to stick to backyards and shadows and hide and dash, so nobody will see him, and despite the fact that a heap load of trouble is awaiting him, as he enters mothers’ wagon, Kurt smiles. It’s a painful memory, this night of fire and laughter, but he is glad was there to experience it.

#deep blue thoughts #solo writing #kurt wagner #nightcrawler #xmen one shot #oh look - cipher is using their own experience of growing up as an outsider in a Bavarian village to relate to a fictional character xD #please tell me what you think #this is so much longer than it was supposed to be #oops

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