I'm trying to describe the hazy effect fire has on the air. Can I use "fire haze"? Are these correct and natural? 1. Later that afternoon, they sat around the firepit. Sam gazed at Laura through the flames, her face distorted and blurry through the fire haze. 2. Later that afternoon, they sat around the firepit. Sam gazed at Laura through the fire haze, her face splashed with flickering firelight.
As was suggested, I think 'shimmer' or 'shimmering' (or a variation) is what you are looking for. What you have is basically a mirage, but in this case it would be above the flames, so I wouldn't say "through the flames" as your first example. You could describe it also as a mirage or shimmering mirage. That's what I'd consider, but I'd write it in a way that would cause some people to puke. It could also be described like an Impressionist painting, but this wouldn't make sense at night, and again might cause some people to cringe.
Is this okay? Later that afternoon, they sat around the firepit. Sam gazed at Laura through the shimmering mirage above the flames, her face splashed with flickering firelight, distorted and blurry. I understand it's too much. I want to see if all of it is okay. Later, I will cut some of it.
I like the other suggestions of 'shimmering.' But that seems to imply a sort of flashing. I think I'd prefer wavering or something like that. That's very hot air, meaning less dense, meaning light travels through it noticeably differently. When light enters a different medium, its speed changes. That's called refraction. Depends on your narrator's likely linguo (nerd or not?): Her face, just past the flames, wavered in the refracted light. Edit: shimmer does indeed also fit the bill, according to the dictionary.
I can't really help, but I would shorten it. Some of this is a matter of style. I'd maybe describe it as shimmering and liken her face (from his perspective) as a mirage, sort of a literal and figurative mirage that he seeks to quench his thirst. I WOULDN'T say all that, of course, just note her face shimmered like a mirage and let the readers draw their own interpretations.
I always thought those were called heat waves. I mean, I know a heat wave is a period of intense heat like most of us are experiencing now, but I thought as long as you add the "S" at the end then it refers to that visual effect. And you could add words like shimmering or wavering to get across the rippling mirage effect. But a quick search makes me believe I'm the only person who thinks this.
You can say the heat effect makes everything behind it (or everything seen through it) waver and dance. Or wobble, though that sounds a little awkward, like the way a drunk walks.
Sorry to be "that guy," but the shimmering effect of rising hot air is not a mirage. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mirage http://www.planet-science.com/categories/under-11s/our-world/2012/01/what-is-a-mirage.aspx It's also not a haze. I think I would use "shimmering," and it appears the Cambridge dictionary and Merriam-Webster agree. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shimmering
I said 'basically'. My understanding is that the phenomenon the OP is describing is in essence the same one that results in a mirage. In fact, the wikipedia article uses the terms mirage, heat haze and heat shimmer and even lists a campfire as a possible cause of one of the types of mirage effects. Perhaps wikipedia is wrong, or my interpretation is totally off base. Either way, I'll leave it for everyone else to determine how to write it.
I saw that too when I googled earlier, but I had never heard some of those terms before today. I mean mirage yeah, and shimmer does fit, but I've never heard it called a heat haze. Does anybody remember ichor? Sorry, somewhat off topic, but not really since I'm talking about Wikipedia and other websites causing a sort of Mandela effect and disappearing long-familiar terms. I looked up ichor earlier. It's the blood or the juice of an insect or a spider, is usually clear or whitish, but in movies and stories it was often said to be green. But on all the sites I could find on the first few pages of the search, all they showed me was some kind of video game term for the blood of the gods, which has magical properties and can heal people. Or kill, it's also incredibly toxic. Apparently that comes from mythology and Talos had ichor flowing through his veins. But nowhere did it mention bug juice. It's as if there's a secret campaign to make everybody forget about it. Really of course, there's a massively popular video game that has taken over the ichor market and squeezed out the original meaning (or the one I knew anyway). I'm just saying I feel like something similar has happened here with these terms for the heat effect. Or I'm finally losing my everlovin' mind.
I get it why you don't agree the shimmer is a mirage. As a reader I wouldn't mind if an author called it that. I don't believe heat 'haze' is technically incorrect. As a reader though, I also think of haze as being smog. But Wiki calls it a heat haze or shimmer. Wiki: Heat Haze I'm going to weigh in here and support this choice: "Later that afternoon, they sat around the firepit. Sam gazed at Laura through the shimmering mirage above the flames, her face splashed with flickering firelight, distorted and blurry." You want the writing to evoke an image and that is what the description does. It's not a science journal. You can sometimes over-analyze these things. But it's easily solved, just take "mirage" out and the sentence reads just fine. The reader will understand just what is shimmering. Grammar wise, "fire pit" is two words.
I think mirage is definitely right. Think about the heat shimmering over desert sand. It has exactly that same wavering effect, but at the bottom of it is what appears to be a lake or a pond or even a distant ocean. These are the mirages people have tried to reach in the desert when they're dying of thirst, only they can never get any closer, as you move forward it just moves with you, the way a rainbow does. It can also look like a highway. But then it doesn't look the same over a fire, there isn't anything at the bottom that looks like a body of water. So yeah, I agree with what @GingerCoffee said. Only I might change it to just shimmer (rather than shimmering).
I had never heard of 'heat haze' or 'heat shimmer' either. I usually just called that effect like a road mirage when it's on a highway. I never thought to give the similar effect with a campfire any type of name or description though. I'm not sure there is any consensus on the color of ichor, even in the context of the Greek Gods. Some say it is gold, others blue. Gold would make some sense if it is nectar-like. Off-Off topic but I thought for sure that the term blue-blood would be from this Greek God ichor blue blood legend, but it seems blue blood comes from the Spanish term 'sangre azul'. Apparently some aristocrats in Spain did not mingle with the darker minorities (like the Moors) and they prided that they were so light that their blood looked blue in their veins due to their lighter skin. It's possible this may have been influenced by the concept of the Greek Gods having blue blood, but I think it's more likely that the claim that ichor in Greek Mythology was blue is a modern thing, due to the 'blue blood' idiom derived from Spanish. But there is other lore that does use the word ichor with a greenish color. In the Mandalorian there is a substance called ichor but it's more of a misty powder I think, which is described as green. In some Lovecraft works he describes ichor as being greenish-yellow. Ichor is a very old medical term for bile, so his version of ichor is probably influenced by that. In The Dunwich Horror, a monster with tentacles is described as having a greenish-yellow ichor. Maybe that term was used in a lot of older horror films with giant bugs?
I'm 77 years old. Throughout those 77 years (or as many of them as I was vocal, anyway), the only way I have encountered the term "mirage" has been in the context of the false image of a body of water in the distance. The visual phenomenon that causes a mirage may be the same as or related to that which creates heat shimmer, but I have never encountered the heat shimmer effect being referred to as a mirage. FWIW.
Living in the Panhandle of Texas, I have often seen mirages and heat shimmer (I prefer that usage) during heat waves. Mirages really don’t shimmer much in my experience. Now, heat shimmer over a stretch of asphalt that is 20 or more degrees higher than the ground is something else. However, I have not experienced a campfire or fire pit hot enough to cause the shimmer. That would be one big fire, rather more than an intimate situation would call for.
