Toward the Flame(2)
The fresh morning air and the alluring glow of the sun summoned Alexander, who could not resist the urge to embrace nature. Tracing the circumference of the lake with his foot, Alexander suddenly encountered an unfamiliar man.
Curious about the man’s identity, Alexander asked: “What is your name?”
“I am Sergei”, the man replied, glancing towards the horizon, “it was only a few days ago when I settled at this place.”
Thinking that Sergei would stop talking, Alexander opened his mouth again, but he was no match for Sergei’s trembling voice.
“My brother, I have come all the way here from the ruined city of Vladivostok, just in time to have my reprieve here, the Krasnoyarsk Krai. Anyway, have you not heard of the impenetrable fire that followed me on my northbound journey?”
At this very moment, both Alexander and Sergei were suddenly startled, as if they were deer exposed to headlights. They looked up, the colours above had been substituted by a more upbeat sky blue, but without warning, a distressing shade of light-grey suddenly veiled the atmosphere, causing the sun to ooze a poisonous orange light. The once lively pair of exalted birds were suddenly teeming with fluster: their song had ceased seemingly aeons ago, and their relaxed and controlled dance morphed into agitation and delirium. Perhaps, they had instinctively detected something much more perilous than the changing colours above.
There was no need to look back. A peculiar smell soon crept up their nostrils. Having settled in such a placid place for years, Alexander could not recall the last time he had inhaled something so unfamiliar and something so inauspicious. He almost choked. However, it did not take Sergei so long to recognise the smell, the odour of his new worst fear: a raging fire.
Before the fast approaching flame, the pair stared into each other’s wide-open eyes. In a spot of panic, Alexander became firmly rooted to the ground, unable to move a single muscle. Sergei vanished. Hope laid within Alexander himself. He alone controlled fate. He was briefly a god.
He saw it now. The raging wall of flame threatened him with its velocity: one moment, the inferno roared atop a hill, and the next it crackled at the bottom. Under the illumination of such a fierce flame, the sky was violently dyed a poisonous orange. The once idyllic lake boiled into a deathly smudge, hosting glaring flashes of brightness that dance with hypnotic blobs of black mass.
The cracking of the dead branches, the crackling of the blaze, the crunching of every single plant produced a devlish cacophony that stupefied Alexander - he had never heard a noise so wicked or fearsome.
Alexander’s back tingled dreadfully. He was struggling to breathe. The overpowering blaze was savagely stealing oxygen away from his innocent lungs as it selfishly indulged itself in all available fuel, just like how the Cyclops Polyphemus had once consumed men.
He was alone. He only possessed a house by the lake. His plan of escape, if he had any, was doomed to fail. The fire was simply unconquerable. Having raged across most parts of the world, it had finally come to this place. Human civilisation was doomed to fail, let alone a feeble being in the shape of Alexander.
In an act of impulse, he walked towards the flame.
