Originally part of Furious Fiction: July 2023 Story Showcase.
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A leaf drifted lazily in the wind, a red and gold platitude falling to mark the season. The girl watching it so melancholy, felt a death knell as it touched down.
She wrapped her arms around herself, the hollow emptiness in her chest screaming out into the void of this dying landscape in front of her. The girl closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.
Trying and failing to remember what happiness might feel like.
The wind ran on by her, carrying with it the smell of smoke, and the distant and quiet crackling of those burned out husks lying on the ground. Still hot with coals, so many days on.
A place, once so full of life, vitality, was now such a barren wasteland. Turning back the clock was impossible. Trees, once so lush and green, now naked and charred. She wished she could turn back time, to when more than a single leaf was left to fall.
A world filled with the brilliant coppery colours of autumn, and the laughter of falling into a pile of leaves. Days when the sun shone down on her and the soft breeze whispered through her hair.
Her eyes opened as she gave a shallow cough into her hand, throat and chest feeling the gentle burn from the lingering smoke in the air.
She felt entirely alone, in this desolate waste.
This was the reality of it all.
The bushfires had raged their way through, and left nothing behind. They had screamed out their anger at the changing temperatures of the world, unbalanced, unforgiving. Life was lost when it stood in the way.
In front of her was the frame of the place she'd called home. Only the frame. The reinforcing beams stood like little hands, stretched towards the skies, begging for mercy. Screaming out the last breaths as the house was completely swept away.
Moving closer, she was too afraid to so much as step onto the porch. It was broken, crackling away with the dying flames.
She tried her best to hold back her tears, looking up at the man who was braver than her, more desperate than her. The shadow of her father moved through the smoking ruins, searching. Hunting for anything that might have survived.
She had no hope.
God help her, she was only fifteen.
The smoke carried the screams and tears on the wind. Voices of the lost, the dead and damned. Families ripped apart, fools caught before they could run. There was no bumper of protection. It didn't care if you had a virtue, it cut you down all the same. Heroes and villains.
Her dad gave a shout of triumph, and quickly and evenly stepped to the doorway, proudly holding out a singed prize towards her.
She burst into tears, her teddy bear saved.
