By the work of a single, flickering power line, in a single, violent night, the valley was crippled.

Each lovingly crafted shade of green, every hill that was whole with life and tossed by a playful breeze, had been either withered to its shadow-self or taken entirely. No birds sung in the trees. They were long since gone or dead. The sky a smear of brown, like a greasy old window, with an angry welt of a red sun. Once-golden hills scarred with jagged slashes of black, the rest smeared with ash.

The weight of such a devastation dragged on my shoulders like a yoke. Because it wasn’t just the animals that were silent. The people were, too. Every face painted with dirt, ash, and a grim acceptance. Some kind of loss wormed its way into everyone, even those lucky enough to have kept their homes and families intact.

Worse than the withered land and the disheartened people were the bottom barrel scum that was the looters. That first night, huddled in my bed with my sister, I heard them. No one in particular, just gunshots and screams. Someone lucky enough to have kept their home and family intact, suddenly and decidedly unlucky and unintact. I didn’t sleep, even with my dad sitting by the door with his shotgun. Neither did my sister.

Weeks passed of brown-sky days and gunshot nights. I went out once with a bandana wrapped around my face, and caught pieces of ash floating down from the sky. I pretended it was snow. It looked a little like snow, anyway.

But then, we drove out to the fireline, and any delusion was scrubbed clean from my mind.

Before, I’d only ever seen campfires and candlelight. Only know a fire that was tame, yellow, curiously innocent. This fire was red and jagged, like a torn page. This fire was one hundred feet tall, belching great lungfuls of smoke and ash. This fire was a great and feral beast. Shamelessly, I cried at the sight of it, tears tracking paths into the ash that had settled on my face in our short stint outside.

Years have passed now, and I still know in my bones the way that sunlight looks when there’s smoke in the air. When the wind whips through the trees a little too hard, I think of that single power line. That feral beast crawled into my chest and cauterized itself a hole to nest in, never to be forgotten.