Wildfire

The world below the world below, we have to go there. We have to escape the wildfires. They are blazing and coming in closer, we have to go down to the world below the world below. I sent out invitations, but only my grandchildren responded. The others do not believe me, do not see the urgency. They do not believe in wildfires, not in this region, not to this extent. They close their eyes to the danger. They do not believe in a world below and certainly not in a world below the world below. It is just imagination. But I know it is real, it is real in its existence if you truly believe in it. And no, that is not magic, it is just the order of things.

I hear a knock on the door, my grandchild arrived, only one of them. Where are the others? We can wait just a little bit longer, but not too long. Time is pressing. Another knock on the door, two more children, not my grandchildren. I don’t know how they found me. It doesn’t matter, I let them in. If they found me, they are meant to be here.

It is time, we have to go, go down. I take their hands, they close their eyes. We fall, we keep falling, we keep falling down, and down, and down. We hear the roaring of the wildfire, we feel the heat. The children open their eyes. They see what I see. We are in a transparent tunnel, in the middle of the fire. We see the flames. We see people, confused, running, trying to escape. Only people, no animals. They are too late, these people. We see people we know. I see my children. My grandchild and the other children see their parents.

‘Can we still save them?’

‘No child we cannot reach them anymore, this tunnel is protecting us. We are not really there. We are in the world below the world below.’

Even here the fire hurts, it is hot. The children are crying, trying to fight the pain, trying to fight their grief.

‘Let it come, feel it, so you never forget, let it all wash over you till it is gone.’

We sit down and feel the pain, the grief. We feel the regret of the people dying in the wildfire. We close our eyes again until it is over. The pain is gone, the noise is gone, the heat is gone. There is silence, emptiness, space, endless space.

We hold hands, stand up and rise, and rise and rise up to the surface, the scorched earth. We don’t know how much time has passed. We see new sprouts of green in the vast landscape of black and grey, some small animals roaming around. There is life, there is still life. Can we start over again?