The ground could barely hold itself down on the inhale, and every frame of every building in the city strained to not buckle against the exhale. Loose debris crashed against and chipped windows, and whole streets became barricaded as cars and dumpsters loosened from their spots and jammed together back and forth by great torrents of wind. Even the far reaches felt it, and the disturbance was written across the sky for many miles.
The sky to the northeast was as if night had punched a hole through day. On the fringes of the broken horizon were thick clouds of earth veined with lightning. The thunder of a thousand strikes evened out to a drone, and out of the wound in the distance the ground rumbled with terrifying tenderness.
From the south, a small line of candle-bearers proceeded unhindered by the wind. They were dressed in funeral attire and nothing about them was disturbed. There was a man with quiet eyes in front. The tall, thin candle in his hands burned brightly and the malestrom parted wherever he led the six others in his procession.
The procession continued undeterred. They passed into the city and through its heart, with care to advance through the chewed pavement so that their candles did not dip to the ground. For seven hours they continued up the winding blocks and intersections, into the harsher winds, into the droning thunder, into the monumental thrumming that made its own sky and horizon.
In the last moment of the last hour, the candles could not be seen even from the sky. They had crossed over into the chorus of roars aspirated by the gales which loosened the earth. Every fragmented edge and hollow was constantly shrieking, as if the world were made of instruments being tuned at once and for the first time.
Seven candles burned against the vastness of the breath-winds. The procession did not slow as they went into it, nor did they falter as they brought light to where brightness and reflection were alien.
What it was, what they were doing, or what was there, none can say, but the gales stopped, and there was a rolling silence through the land.
The candles remained alone in the clearing, their wicks sunken into warm rounds of melted wax.