Go! Go!
The May Queen has passed!
We watched her, saw her, ascend, descend over the steps before us.
We watched, saw, the fire-lighters start the nied fire.
We watched, we saw, the path cut through the crowd, past us, past us, the procession moved past us.
We ran!
Run! Run!
Do not lose her! Never lose her!
We ran, ran, over the grassy hill, down a tunnel of bodies bemused by the sudden space where magic had passed us.
And found ourself stopped. In the cold. Behind the wall of blue-faced men who told us no.
Stopped. Lost. Cold.
No. We smiled. No. We can say no too.
We said no, said yes.
Our band of fey-folk flew apart, found our places. Mine and hers, my beltane-friend, our place was running!
We followed the Queen, she led our hunt!
We flew, cross the hill, round and about, past people bemused, over rocks and dips that lifted us gently over their treachorous forms (one fey-folk twisted her ankle, others sat with the stillness of the rocks holding their bones, we, somehow, flew unscathed, the earth herself letting us pass).
We flew! Flew! From space to space, always, just and perfectly, keeping pace.
For long stretches we flew beside her, so close as to almost touch her, but always striving to respect the boundary which kept her safe. (So grateful, I am, to the blue-faced folk that kept us all at bay. So grateful, while I longed to touch her. So grateful for that line, uncrossable, sacrosanct.)
Sometimes the crowd became too tight, too close, too confused, and we flew away, to the edges, still running.
Time and again we let the stillness touch us. I pointed the direction, she led the way. Together we flew, together, mapping out a perfect path.
At every space the procession stopped we found a niche, once the fire-space came upon us unexpectedly and we watched, entranced, by the spinning flames and the red-people charging, the white-people keeping the line, the line that must be crossed. The pain of division.
We saw Him die and rise again, his dance frenzied in the strobe-light of camera-flashes.
Their kiss, love shining from them like a star.
The red and white, chaos and order, together, united, in love.
Each element, a gift in themselves.
The whole path winding round and round, the serpent of great Beltane found.
We watched, we flew, we laughed.
We were touched by madness, running in the wake of her winter-hunt, running like the joyous hounds of hell as the sun-fire rose and burned away the last of the winter’s dark.
We ran, flew, followed… and we rejoiced.
The fire festival, a ritual carving its own space through a crowd, deliberately confused.
This was no mere spectacle, but a marvelous sacrifice of life to life for life in life.
Life rises like the sun.
The May Queen blessed us all.
The fires of our hearts ignite as the sun kisses our skin, and they will never die.
Halo Quin 