faineant, adj: lazy, idle –n. a lazy, idle person

On the roofs of the buildings wait the faineant of the town, for nightfall, for moonrise. It is the night of the full moon, when the generative power of the moon is greatest, when the danger for the unwary is the most extreme, when even the blood of sober burghers and staid matrons races and pounds, and when shifting, amorphous, and enticing shapes are glimpsed beyond the walls of the town. The faineant are dedicated to the moon, to the cycle, to the mystery, and this is their night of nights, midsummer, and a full moon, rare as rare, largest moon, shortest night. They are nude, each crouched into himself against the swirling wind, each lunatic face pressed into each hairy belly, until the moon should rise.

The moon comes across the city, and the faineant unfurl in its light, from east to west. They rise lightfooted, chests bare, penises erect, eyes mazed, minds glorified, and begin their dipping, bobbing, swirling dance, untaught by any — for the faineant neither spin nor sew nor learn nor teach — but identical from east to west beneath the full moon, for hour upon hour, until the moon is overhead. At that slender hour, each faineant turns and leaps from the roof of his building, arms and mind and member straining in the glory of the night. It is a lethal fall, for the buildings of the town are high and sturdy, and no faineant survives, twitching, to see the moon set.

In the morning the staid matrons and the sober burghers will come flushed and trembling from their houses and lift the faineant overhead, and bear them bloody and cold to the fields, and bury them deep beneath the earth, deep below the green shoots just rising from the black earth.