The two big, guard looking guys stepped forward towards Nolan. They didn’t say anything but they were clearly about to do something that Nolan couldn’t stop. They each reached into the grill and grabbed red hot coals. Then at the same time the men thrust the coals into Nolan’s stomach! It didn’t hurt him but it scared him. Quickly he was flooded with feeling of every kind. He felt the coals burning and spinning. They began to make strange sounds, not sounds you hear but sounds you feel from the inside!
Nolan began to cry as he remembered every mistake he had ever made. It was like they were being burned out of him. He was breathing fire but couldn’t see it and his thoughts and feelings were being purged of every bad thing. All the trouble he’d been in, all the pain other people had caused him, all the hurt feelings and stupid circumstances burned and burned. At first, he thought this was hurting him and it was scary but soon he began to forget. His soul felt so clear! He was starting to understand from outside of how he felt, everything was so incredibly clear now!
As he burned and breathed fire and life, as the coals burned away his issues, as he stood there afraid and loved and curious, as he listened to the sounds coming out from the coals, Nolan noticed the sparkling rainbow mist in the palace tent. It was getting thicker, like a fog was developing all around the tent and rolling out of the curtain that cover the entrance. The two guards who had placed the coals inside of him walked over and pulled the curtain open on both sides. It was time to go inside.
The third man motioned to Nolan to come with him and they walked into the tent palace together. Inside there were several burning lamps on tables. All the furniture had decorative artwork carved into it all around. There was a but bath tub looking thing full of beautiful water like what he had seen outside in the river. He saw all of these things but what really stood out the most were this incense burner and the curtain on the back wall.
Some of his friends had incense burners. They burned these little sticks like an air freshener. One of his friends even had a little statue attacked to where you burned the stick. But this didn’t look like that at all. It was a big gold looking box with gold horns on it. The sparkling rainbow fog was coming from it. It didn’t have those little sticks either. There were little granules, like sand. There were many colors of sand always appearing and burning. They just showed up there and burned and created the cloud that surrounded the whole place.
The smell of it was incredible! Each granule turned into one scent or another and each scent mingled perfectly with the others. Then the scents of them all went down into Nolan and touched the burning coals. The fire he was breathing and the sounds coming from inside of him as the coals burned in his stomach intensified when he breathed in the smoke of the cloud. The third man motioned for him to look and he knelt on the floor in like a prayer pose. Nolan didn’t understand what the man was trying to show him.
Then Nolan looked over at the curtain on the back wall. It was torn from top to bottom but it was locked with a strange lock. The keyhole had a strange shape, he had never seen a key that could fit this. Then he realized what the third man was trying to show him. It was him! The keyhole was shaped like the third man! It was the shape of him, on his knees in that prayer pose! It was like you could have picked him up off of the floor and put him right into the lock! Nolan didn’t know what was behind the curtain but he had a feeling he was about to find out.
The man motioned for Nolan to kneel down next to him, in front of the incense burner. So he knelt down and made a prayer pose on the floor. When he did, he began to speak the noises that the coals were making inside of him. He didn’t understand what he was saying but he noticed the most amazing thing when he talked. These sounds that the coals were making, when spoken out of his mouth they turned into the granules! The incense granules appeared in the air in front of him and flew up, landing on the incense burner! These words were burning up next to the golden horns and becoming the sparkling rainbow cloud around him.
Nolan breathed in the cloud and felt the fire of the coals get hotter inside of him. He loved the smell and the feeling of the coals when he breathed in the cloud. Everything got hotter and hotter as he spoke the words that made the granules that burned up as the smoke of the cloud, only to breathe it back in and heat up the coals inside of him. It was like perpetual motion, a perfect cycle. The man next to him did the same and as they spoke in the prayer pose next to each other on the floor in front of the incense burner they began to merge together!
Nolan was already freaked out but this was a new level! They were doing the same thing, in the same shape as the keyhole on the back wall curtain and they began to become the same person! Soon they were completely one with each other and that’s when it happened. Nolan was drawn to the lock like a magnet. Merging the man into him made Nolan the shape of the lock and he flew into it! He and the third man were spun over in the lock and it released. He heard a loud sound and the two guards began to open the torn curtain. Suddenly Nolan and the third man were standing next to each other again watching the curtain be pulled back.
Practice Outlaw 