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Dust Devil

from Utburd by Michael Bell

/

lyrics

It arrived with a sting of blown sand against my burned face, and a soft voice, whispering in the rising dust. I stopped to listen. Nothing. I wrapped myself tighter and lowered my head. I walked.

The water was gone. This was my only thought. I climbed the face of a dune, and I slid down the other side. I did it again. And again. Always moving toward a ragged blue line in the far distance, tall rocks, or hills maybe, or green trees swaying above a cool green pool.

I descended to a white plain. Sharp crystals whipped into my eyes, insistent, as a hot breeze swept out of the dusk. The voice again, from the slope behind me, then a call, far off in the shimmering haze. The breeze became a wind that pressed me to the salt. I crawled, near blind.

It was still when I woke, but utterly dark. My body was an agony of thirst. I waited.

And in that abyss, then, a distant orange spark, just a flicker, like a cat’s eye in torchlight. It took notice of me, and approached, growing, spinning slowly into a twisting braid, until it stood over me, a whirling column of flame. It gazed down at me, breathing, whispering my name, and I could hear how it smiled, and how it hungered.

credits

from Utburd, released October 29, 2023

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all rights reserved

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Michael Bell Bellingham, Washington

A Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too.

Some of this is music for video games. The rest is a fairly raw document of my ongoing attempt to find something new among the blinking lights in my studio at home.

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