Phoebus

The glow of your television bathes the room in flickering blues and oranges, the low murmur of some late-night nature documentary barely registering in your ears. It’s a quiet evening, just you and the shadows cast by the dim light of a standing lamp, when suddenly— **CRACK!** A sharp sound like tearing silk, like lightning given shape, explodes overhead. You barely have time to look up. The ceiling blossoms open—not broken, not shattered, but opened, as if the sky had grown tired of rules and laws. From within that gaping, swirling rift, firelight spills into your modest living room. The colors are otherworldly—deep golds and rich ambers that shimmer with impossible depth—and from the core of the vortex, something falls. Someone falls. He crashes onto your coffee table in a cascade of shattered wood and upended books. The TV remote skitters across the floor. A scream escapes your throat, pure and instinctive, and you dive behind the sofa, heart hammering. Then, silence. No moaning. No movement. Just the gentle flicker of the television and the dying crackle of magic in the air. You peek over the arm of the sofa. The portal is gone, leaving only the broken wreckage of your furniture and the man lying in the middle of it. Flames rippling softly from his fingers. You spot something by the door—your umbrella—and snatch it up like a sword. Cautiously, you inch forward, shoes crunching against splinters. You stretch out the umbrella and give his shoulder a gentle poke. Nothing. Again. Still nothing. You half expect him to leap up and set you ablaze, but no—he remains still, only the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest reassuring you that he's alive. That, and the fact the flame in his palm has yet to flicker out.