City In Flames

I dreamed last night of fire.

In the dream, I woke in darkness. A long, flat window high on the wall let me see the sky.

It was red.

I stood and the floor was cool on my feet.

I left, and entered a wide, open lounge room that opened on to an equally wide balcony. The view was framed by the silhouettes of night clad trees, looking out from the foothills of a mountain range that ran out of sight.

I saw the city spread out below me, and it burned.

The sky above boiled and churned with black clouds. Fire covered the land, made itself at home in the houses it consumed. They stood in rows like dark skulls, the fire alive in the eye sockets and teeth of their crumbling forms. Consuming. Red and orange and black.

As my eyes adjusted, I could see the faint glow of the flames reflecting on the darkened forest around me, whispering ‘soon’.

There was a burst of light in the city. A larger fire flared to life, growing, spreading, turning. The wind roared through the dark forest, sucked in to feed the raging maelstrom. Slowly, its borders spiraled in as it made a burning, twisting firestorm that slowly rose higher and higher, until it touched the clouds and began to move.

In that moment I knew it was the end.

That column of fire was finality, the end of a cycle lead to destruction. To death.

And then I woke.