Conservation Designation

As the car approached the flashing light, Peeter assumed it was one of those used car lots spending an up-month's profit on a massive strobe light. Would you be surprised to learn that the flashes were coming from the boardwalk? Would you be shocked to learn that a wizard with a true blue robe and felty white stars had tripped and dropped his magic wand over the railing? Magic wands self-destruct like slow-motion firecrackers in the summer season. The little white plastic caps blow off and an airborn stream of, well, magic, combusts all over the place. It's pretty cool in the dark because it looks like a freak firecracker. All the little stars and magic dust, aflame. Unforgettable. The wizard had splinters all in his right soul, for he had tripped, on a boardwalk, and when you trip on a boardwalk, and you're a wizard, well, you gotta take responsibility for what happens.

As it turns out all that happened was that some bystanders got a pretty sexy drowsy feeling to slowly slurp through their bodies. That's the closest sensation it can be related to. Imagine strolling on the parking lot pavement just below the boardwalk. You and your date just finished some crappy clam bar special, you could taste the sand in the clams and you chalk it up to the "experience." [ five sentences censored ] Heading to your car, parked nose-first against the boardwalk beams, an enormous fountain of burning magic erupts in front of you (on the other side of the boardwalk, after all, people who walk on the boardwalk actually stay near the railing closer to the shore, obviously). Little tender charms, aflame, and flying to about 150 feet in the air. Little crescent moons and five-pointed stars, little fusillis and annoying farfalles, religious icons and transportation signifiers, cute bunnies and ugly spiders, and other interesting things in fiery whites, greens, reds, and some orange.

What's remarkable about the whole situation is that unlike a firecracker, a single magic wands can last all night. So the clam bar customers no-looked their napkins/bibs back behind them on the red leather stools they had been perched on slurping away at sea juice. They moved to the window and slowly, realized there was nothing to be afraid of...magic was in the air. Peeter realized what it was too, in time, and called the authorities, he was that kind of guy.

The couple ducked below the boardwalk and had an incredible view of both ends of the magic wand, spewing majestic tender charms from both ends, kind of nervously alternating, defying gravity, contorting into the positions of a pin drop in rewind and fast-forward. They laid down on the sand and looked up through the cracks in the boardwalk. The magic would sometimes shoot right over them and steadily fall on to their faces. It didn't hurt because it's magic and magic doesn't hurt...even when it's on fire.

I guess there are better places to lie down and look up at the stars from than from under a boardwalk. For example, places with less than 98% obstruction of the sky above you would be better. Also places where debris from the bottom of people's feet didn't slip through the cracks you are counting on to give you glimpses of night sky...would be better. But for the couple, that night, a magic night, all of that didn't matter. The charms gave off a glittery glorious light that illuminated the underbelly of the boardwalk, not to mention the night sky off to their sides. They looked at each other and beyond their faces the shore and the shops. The charm lit up the ocean and the windows equally intensely. Regular motion slowed because intense light at night does that. It's that ferris wheel inertia moment, ya know. You can only go around and around a ferris wheel so many times, or a carousel, at night, without feeling that inertia moment. Your brain is like, all right, this fixed path is boring me to tears, I'm gonna put it on autopilot this next time around. Your mind "wheels." Cinematographers love this shit because audiences love it because it makes sense to us.

The cops pulled the couple (that you imagined) out from the boardwalk and extinguished the magic wand before the grand finale. Fucking idiots. The wizard got arrested because the state doesn't allow firecrackers. Why should he get arrested? Because to people on a job all this mind inertia and lovey-dovey tender charm shit means [word censored].

I'll give you a job.