The Passover

The Fire

The fire rages on. Entire buildings combust and collapse, cars explode, skyscrapers fall like dominoes. Birds fly away from the fire into rocky, or snowy safe havens. Animals run from the burning fires to hide in caves and charred hollow trees.

If one was on the moon, they would see the continents ablaze. Though, there were many places the fire would not touch.

In Washington D.C, the Smithsonian Institution was not touched by fire. Neither were Le Louvre in Paris, France; the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece; the State Hermitagein St. Petersburg, Russia; the British Museum in London, England; the Prado in Madrid, Spain; The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York; the Vatican Museums in the Vatican City, Italy; the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy; and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The United States Capitol in Washington, DC atop Capitol Hill did not burn as well as the Monticello Charlottesville in Virginia; the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; the Villa Farnese in Caprarola, Italy approximately 50 kilometres north-west of Rome; the Symphony Hall in Boston built in 1900 for the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, NY one of the oldest bridges of either type in the United States, connecting the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River; the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, CA; the 630-foot  Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri; theTower of Pisa in Pisa, Italy; the 50.5-kilometre rail Channel Tunnel in the English Channel; the multi-venue performing Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia; the Anglican St. Paul's Cathedral in London, UK on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the city; the wrought iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars known as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France; and the Duomo in Florence, Italy.

The Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains in Peru, above the Urubamba River valley known as Machu Picchu stood fast from the flames that surrounded it. The iconic ruins of the Mayan citadel known as Tikal, the  Pyramids at Giza, the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world, the famous archaeological site in Jordan's southwestern desert known as Petra, the prehistoric monument located in Wiltshire, England, about 2 miles west of Amesbury and 8 miles north of Salisbury known as Stonehenge, the oval amphitheater in the center of the city of Rome, Italy known as the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron known as the Parthenon, the Chilean territory and remote volcanic island in Polynesia known as Easter Island, the white marble mausoleum located on the southern bank of the Yamuna River in the Indian city of Agra known as the Taj Mahal, located in New Delhi, India, is a Bahá'í House of Worship known as the Lotus Temple, the gilded stupa known as the Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar, the former Christian patriarchal basilica known as Hagia Sophia in Turkey, the Shinto shrine that is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shōken known as Meiji Shrine in Japan, the Ghats of Varanasi in India, the limestone hill that has a series of caves and cave temples in Malaysia are known as the Batu Caves, one of the most important examples of early Christian Byzantine art and architecture in Europe known as the Basilica of San Vitale in Italy,
the Moorish Revival Spanish Synagogue in the Czech Republic, the Boudhanath stupa in Nepal,
one of eleven monolithic churches in Ethiopia known as Bet Giyorgis, one of the largest and most important complexes of Greek Orthodox monasteries in Greece known as the Meteora, the
gompa affiliated with the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism known as the Thikse Monastery in India, the prominent Himalayan Buddhist sacred site and temple complex known as the Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, the 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist Temple known as the Borobudur in Indonesia, the Tiger Cave Temple in Thailand, the underground Roman Catholic church built within the tunnels of a salt mine 200 metres underground in a Halite mountain known as the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá in Colombia, and the island commune in Normandy, France known as the Mont Saint Michel were not scorched by the flames.

The research library that officially serves the United States Congress known as the Library of Congress stood tall as it kept its information safe. The British Museum located in the Bloomsbury area of London, the 18th-century academic library and reading rooms known as the Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Camera, the Vatican Library, St. Mark's Library, the municipal public library system in Boston known as the Boston Public Library, the New York Public Library with its nearly 53 million items, the main information repository and research resource for the Parliament of Canada known as the Library of Parliament, the largest library in Austria known as the Austrian National Library, the museum and research library known as the Morgan Library and Meuseum, the National Library of Sweden that collects and preserves all domestic printed and audio-visual materials in Swedish, the national library of Denmark and the university library of the University of Copenhagen known as the Royal Library, the 19th-century focused research library of The Johns Hopkins University known as the George Peabody Library and the major library and cultural center located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the Egyptian city of Alexandria known as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina suffered no book burnings.

Perhaps, it as a strong magnetic pull or magnetic force field that protected these precious sites. Either way, the surviving wildlife flocked to these safe havens to stay protected form the fires. These important places where now known as home to the surviving animal and plant life. Of course, the aquatic animal and plant life did not suffer form fire. As the fire consumes the evergreen forests, pine cones fall and explode like firecrackers, spreading their seeds upon the ground.

Soon, the fire would be put out and the surviving wildlife would have to find new refuges.