The Flame (06/05/17)

With wisps of orange at the tips and yellow at it's centre, the flame flickered apprehensively. It was just a flame after all. A flame in the darkness of the night. Who knows where it came from. It was unattended, and unstable, but it didn't want to hurt anyone. It wasn't one to put up a fuss. It simply liked to exist. Wildlife would come and go, and perhaps sit with it and warm up to the little flame as it wavered with the gentle breeze on the fingertips of the smoke, hanging from the sky.

As the sun rose from the Eastern hills the little flame reached for it desperately, chasing after it as it lifted into the sky to the east, unaware of the trail it was leaving behind. The flame had always been curious as to what it was like to be a big flaming ball, constant and still in space as everything else orbited around it. How nice it would be to be the centre of the everything; the core of energy. How lovely it would be to have the company of other flames, violently rising and falling, the voices raise and lower, and every flicker has it's job. Every flicker has it's purpose.

The flame only wanted to have a bigger purpose. It chased the sun until it set in the west. Catching it's breath it turned around and saw what it had done. The trail of destruction stretched for miles across houses, barns, fields, and forests, and the flame shrunk naturally as guilt weighed it down. No, the flame didn't mean any harm, but the flame had ruined the livelihood of families, simple farmers, and all the woodland animals. It had ruined their homes, and everything they knew. But the little flame meant no harm.

At dawn the flame would retry. It would forget the damage it had done and it would chase the sun all day until night settled in again, and the day would summarize itself with more destruction and more death and more hurt.

Still, the little flame meant no harm. Every night it remembered the damage it had done and feels the guilt on his shoulders. But the sun will rise again, and the day before will forget itself. And though the trail of damage the little flame leaves behind leaves it feeling ashamed, it learns to accept that it was made to be destructive; destruction is in it's nature. But again, it will forget at dawn, the cycle replays, until the people decide they have had enough. The people will kill it at night, when it is weakened by it's own guilt and shame. And yet, little flame meant no harm.

xx.