One of the things one does at a job like this, while seeking out smoke and flame from way up there on the deck, is follow lights. There’s not much else to do. There are plenty of them. Airplanes, satellites, helicopters, and the other things.
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Josie is at her last evening as Fire Lookout. She’s been on this assignment for 5 months. It has been eventful. She’s reported her share of fires, that’s for sure. She’s really going to miss this job. She loves it. She’s been combing the local county papers for another job close by, so she can return to this post next season.
It’s been something that she’s grown accustomed to. The unexplainable lights that often show up when she thinks about them. It doesn’t always happen, but it does happen. Josie wonders if it’s their way of playing. She likes to talk to the wildlife when she’s out there. She’ll see a some Deer, and she’ll kiss to them, and speak calmly to them. They look back at her, curious, and then go back about their life. There’s no pretense of a relationship. It’s just a thing humans do when they see some critter or other.
She thinks maybe that’s the nature of these encounters. We are so dissimilar to them, and our minds function so differently, that it would make sense that perhaps they are merely enjoying a moment with a different consciousness. Perhaps their sensitivity to our awareness of them is similar to the sounds we hear when a Deer moves through some brush.
She wonders if our observer effect is felt by them, like some kind of breeze, or a tingling sensation. They will be traversing the sky, and suddenly, they can feel that they are being seen. Do they see it? Feel it? Hear it?
She’s packing up the last of her things. It’s a little sad for her. She’s made the little station in the tower her little fort. She takes down from the wall pages with jokes she’s written. Some sketches, some family photos with her dad and sister. She boxes up her snacks, and she places all these things in her backpack, near the door to the ladder.
As she’s sweeping the floor for the last time, she’s keeping watch, she’s still on the clock, that’s why she’s here. She will be gone for good, first thing in the morning. As if on cue. There they are, the lights. As she steadies the tripod scope, she drops her head for a moment, and they’re gone. That happens a lot. It’s as if they know she’s going for a lens.
She spends her last overnight shift, circling the deck tower as usual, and strumming on a ukulele. She sings softly and thinks. Thankfully, there are no fires. Just the usual noises in the woods below, and the passing of aircraft. She thinks about the conscious lights. She wonders if she’ll see them again. She reckons there will be times that she’s aware of them, but they’re there whether she sees them or not.
In the morning is the shift change. She greets the new daytime lookout. They have some small talk, and she wishes him well. As she passes through the woods, on the trail to her vehicle, she sees a Deer nibbling peacefully on some leaves, from the corner of her eye, she sees something glint in the sky.
570 Words.
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