Wildfire

second year srija sengupta

photo by atithi patel

There’s something blessed about this.

Flames slink across the forest floor, embracing trunks into grey ash. Smoke leaps and curls in the air, playful and cutting. The mountainside goes wild with color, reds and oranges so vibrant against the dark trees that it makes the eyes fill with tears. It is brilliant desolation, life and death dancing in a tableau shimmering with watery heat.

There is no sense of time, only a fire as wild as the day music was created. It rushes through the abandoned fox dens and the old bear caves, licks greedily at birds’ nests and hisses mightily at the small stream. Even that too is conquered, the banks ablaze with gold that gets reflected in the stream’s waters. 

There will be a time for new life. Saplings will peer through their soil, and the dens and caves will ring with music once again.

But for now, there is just the fire.