The first fire circle.

The land made the fire before we did. We brought wood and a guitar and said yes when someone passed it.

Nobody planned the seating. People found stones, found logs, found each other. The first hour was mostly quiet. Someone asked if talking was allowed. We said the fire decides. That is not an answer, and it worked anyway.

The fire decides.

By ten there were fourteen of us. Two guitars, one barely tuned. A pot of tea doing the rounds. La-Kissiah kept the flames honest. Barry kept the wood coming. A writer who had not spoken at dinner told a story about her grandmother's kitchen. Then she went quiet again, satisfied.

A fire has its own clock. Conversations that take three drinks to surface in a bar arrived in the second hour without any help. The long silences felt like part of the talking, not gaps in it. Two people who had met that morning made a plan to walk to the waterfall at dawn. They actually went.

What we learned, for whoever joins next: light it an hour early, so the fire is already a fact and not a performance. Keep the circle wider than feels right. Leave gaps for the late ones. Put the tea where everyone can reach it without asking.

Fridays, from now on. We will not promise what happens. Bring nothing.