Fire Within

A Story by James Prudence

Descriptive Passage

Fire Within

The westward wind soared over farmer’s fields, lofty pines, and shimmering interstate. The warm wind felt like ice to anyone outdoors, the sun searing with little to no cloud cover. The wind came in bursts; just long enough to remind people of cooler times, then forcing them back into the furnace of August. The weather acted as a blacksmith's forge, the firing and quenching, tempering those whom did not shatter.

The wind pushed on ambivalent of its affect. Blowing a pillar of thick dark, it fed the flames as a set of youths tried to dampen them to no avail. The smoke ascended from a pit ten feet deep, with tapered sides that eventually morphed into a steep drop-off. From its heart flickering crimson, flames rose almost to its lip, blacking grass in all directions.

Four youths labored, throwing rotten apples, and water soaked cardboard into the blaze, while a scrawny senior chastised a fifth carrying a pile of weeds. His voice might as well have been a gunshot. It drowned the sound of the crackling blaze, and carried all the way to the orchard; though in any other setting it would seem commonplace. Over thirty young men scattered throughout the surrounding countryside (fields and trees with only three buildings on the half square mile), and all were silent. The few adults among them chatted occasionally, but the strange atmosphere seemed to deter them. The old man seemed not to notice. Barking orders this way and that, the taskmaster spoke with endless variety of how the young whippersnappers should toil harder and faster.

Of all the lads two stood out, both a foot shorter than the others, both with clothes dirty than the others, and both with eyebrows singed. The one with the green eyes stepped to dump his bucket, tripped on a rock, and the bucket flew from his hand in to the inferno. Losing his footing, he started to follow, but a hand on his shoulder steadied him. The bucket below began to writhe, melting into a congealed clump. Looking back into his companions eyes, the fallen-one smiled. Though oaths prevented verbalization, words would have been a redundancy.