[SE] bonfire cries and fireflies

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Melita had already made her lantern. Clementine’s was safe, back in the confines of shelter, but Eloise’s was clutched from her fingers, swung back and forth so that the wind might toss it about and make it feel like the sea. She’d already lit the candle inside, permitting it to cast an eerie, enigmatic glow, like fireflies and flames, along the reaches. She might not have come at all here. But tradition called too – crew members and parties, drifting along the fringes, the boundaries, of waves – a celebration of life, that they still existed, that they had made it along another voyage, and could spread the tales as far as they yearned.

The honeybee and her gourd followed the lines of smoke and the embers of the bonfire, the crowd already beginning to form, and the familiar figures of their captain and their cook outlined against shadows. She avoided Jack for now, steering towards the stack of food Saiden had prospered and granted, snagging at some bread, before offering him a wave, and then settling herself nearby too, Fangorn trailing along. The youth sat directly in the sand, hands conforming to a few shells, pondering where to place them as the lantern followed suit, there upon the dunes.

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun