Promptober 2026 Day 23: Ashes
Another place, another time.
Or perhaps it was a dream.
I closed up the last packet, folding the aluminum foil over and over to seal it. I don’t remember where I heard about this - my sister, maybe? That would make sense, since she had been to America. Or maybe it was Anon?
Tomori and Raana were both watching me intently. I could have used tongs to drop the packets into the fire, but– well, who am I kidding? I was showing off.
“That’s all there is to it,” I said. I very gingerly maneuvered the first packet, then the second, and then, finally, the third, into the hottest part of the fire, where the logs burned bright red. I only slightly winced as the wood cracked and popped and spat a mouthful of sparks at me.
“It’s really okay…?” Tomori was crouching next to me as she stared into the fire.
“It really is,” I said. “We leave it for thirty minutes, and by that time, everything gets cooked all the way through. We’ll know it’s done when the potatoes are soft.”
It must have been a dream - because this close to her, I still had the presence of mind to smile with a little confidence.
As the fire burned merrily away, Tomori and Raana stood by the river’s edge and searched through the stones at their feet.
“Flatness is important,” Tomori said. “B-but! Roundness is also really… really important!”
“Mhm,” Raana said. She seemed to be picking up stones more or less at random.
“It has to sit in the hand… and if there's a lip where you can put your finger, that's ideal…”
Raana made a hmmmm noise. “A lip,” she repeated. “It spins.”
“E…exactly!” Tomori nodded so vigorously that she almost dropped the rocks she was already pooling in the pouch of her hoodie. “You get it!”
Raana threw one of her rocks. It sailed high, turning over and over, until it landed in the river with a satisfying plunk.
“Ah… mmm…” Tomori seemed to hover hesitantly between praise and feedback. “It was a really good throw, Raana-chan… but…”
Plunk. Another throw, another high lob in the river. Tomori accepted it with only a small amount of apparent resignation before hefting one of her own stones, winding up, and hurling it sidearm with a surprising amount of force. It skipped one, twice, three, four times, then skidded across the water with a delicate splash before finally sinking.
Plunk. Plunk-tsssh. Psh-psh-psh-pspspspshhhhhh. The sound of the rocks was distant from my seat next to the fire, but drew my attention up from my book nevertheless. I watched them trade throws - Tomori seeing how many times she could skip her stones, Raana winding up and throwing like a pitcher sending fastballs out into the river. Beyond the far bank, the sun was sinking into the forest, painting a rose sky shot with gold to match the trees below, alive with the perfect, beautiful violence of autumn.
Tomori looked a little downcast as she and Raana trekked back from the water’s edge.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
“Oh…” Tomori frowned. “It's nothing.”
“You sure?”
“Well… it's just…” She heaved a dolorous sigh. “Skipping stones is… fun. But throwing them away like that…”
I sighed, too. No further explanation was necessary.
“If you love something, let it go,” I said, and she nodded in miserable agreement.
We cracked open the foil pouches as twilight overtook our little campsite. The steam from our little bundles of food mixed with the smoking from our waning fire as the first stars began to twinkle overhead.
“Taki-chan?”
And then, just in the space of a breath, it was dark. The last embers glowed in the circle of stones. Raana, yawning, had put her head into my lap. Her breathing was heavy as I stroked her hair.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Look up.”
I did. Free from the light of the city, the stars stretched out to infinity.
Tomori took my free hand and used it to point upward.
“See those three?” she asked.
“Mhm.”
“I love the summer triangle,” she said. “Everyone thinks about it. It's romantic. But… I prefer… those three, there.”
“Orion’s belt,” I said.
In the dark beside me, she smiled. “You can see it so clearly… even in Tokyo,” she said. Then, after a brief pause “W…well… most nights.”
I chuckled. In my lap, Raana stirred.
“So even in the city… I can look up and see them. Even when things are bright, and loud… they ground me.”
I continued to gaze upward as Tomori wrapped her arm around my waist and pulled herself a little nearer to me. She leaned in close to my ear. I could smell her conditioner, her shampoo. It was sweet.
Her lips moved against my ear. She was whispering something.
As the last ember of our fire faded away to ashes, I woke up.