The air smells of something long gone—burnt, not by flame, but by the slow passage of time. Beneath the trees, where the earth feels softer than it ought to, I find myself walking on a land once scorched. Here, in the quiet aftermath, there is no heat, no crackling embers. Only ash. The remnants of a fire that no longer burns, yet still lingers in the bones of the land.
What once stood here? A hearth? A home? It is hard to say. The shapes left behind are only hints—fragments of walls, blackened wood, the jagged remnants of what could have been a door. The vines have long since begun to reclaim the ground, curling through the remains like fingers seeking to comfort something forgotten.
The wind whispers through the trees, carrying with it the memory of smoke. But it is not a fresh smoke—no, this is something older, caught between the layers of time. The ash, like old paper, crumbles beneath my feet. There is no fire here now, but there is a history that cannot quite let go. A history that clings to the soil, to the very air.
I reach down and sift through the ash. There is nothing here but dust, yet somehow, in the way the light falls, I feel as though I could almost hear the crackle of flames again. A warmth that once touched the skin, a life that once filled the walls of this place.
But nothing stays. Not even the fire. It fades, as everything does. The hearth grows cold, the home forgotten, and the ash settles.
Yet, there is something here still—a quiet company in the dust. In the absence of fire, I find myself sitting in the silence, listening to the stories carried by the wind. The remnants of what was. The ash that remains.
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