Fire Without Teeth

I stare at a landscape of sharp, volcanic rock on the border of China and Russia. The land is a sweeping scab of feet-long shards reaching to the sky. I view it atop the volcano that created the landscape from here to the horizon, as I stand slightly separated from my tour group.

We have been on this tour for some weeks, and I have grown to love my group as family. I am the youngest among them, by far. Barely 19, I am like a child stepping tentatively into adulthood amid seasoned military members and graduate students. I wish I could tell them I loved them, without it being weird. 

I content myself with being the duckling, the baby sister, allowed to follow, and pausing at the back to remember this town or this place or this moment. I am their memory keeper.

They are beautiful people, my family. Them, with their eagerness to learn the Chinese language and culture and history of these places that we visit. Them, us, running from market to bar to classes, meeting people, seeing where our curiosity takes us. We enjoy friendly haggling at the stores. We type “Tibet” into the hotel internet to study for how long, this time, our internet would shut down.

I imagine there is a man inside a tiny camera in our room with a giant “internet off” button, which he slams whenever we have pushed our curiosity too far.

We check the volcano off of our itinerary. We agree it is as if the volcano erupted and scattered its teeth. Then we go to our hotel, not far from those serrated rocks.

But then this family of mine pauses at the wide hotel parking lot, where people have gathered to meet us. Word has traveled that there are foreigners in the area. They laugh and chat with the locals, and the sun slips and wanes but we are still in the parking lot. Someone, possibly a hotel security guard, and, remarkably, not the only security guard in my memories to suggest it, proposes that we build a bonfire.

We gather a pile of wood taller than me. We pour liquid from a gas can borrowed from an eager volunteer. Someone lends a cigarette lighter.

And I am no longer a bird hovering at the edges. I am circling a fierce bonfire with dozens of people, holding a different stranger’s hand in each of mine.

We kick our feet as the sliver of sun disappears and the fire blazes. We are a mass of bodies, stomping to the beat of our own laughter. We hardly speak the same language. I hear Chinese and Russian and English. We are of every generation. I think, no one will believe this story. It is too stunning, too strange a landscape.

There are no teeth to our fire. Not everything that burns leaves violence. This fire leaves soft ash, and the etchings of a memory.

Photo: I have permission to use the photos in this post.

Author's note: Thank you so much for reading my draft! This story is posted under the "fiction" genre so I might edit details for privacy. This is part of my Postcards Series—snapshots of human connection in unexpected moments and places.