A nauseating orange cloud hovers over the uncontrollable conflagration that is mercilessly slaughtering the forest below it. The air it lends to the current circumstances is an appropriately foreboding one, a sense of impending doom. For much of these trees, it is impending no more, having transformed to a perfective sense with the flames that have ravaged this area.

I am fully cognizant of what is going on. The authorities have, no doubt, been already summoned. They are standing around with a map, radios, and a fifty-five gallon drum of coffee, trying their hardest to incept a method of halting this fire before it progresses any further. They might have to do nothing; sometimes the pyrocumulus that a forest fire can generate catalyzes rain, extinguishing the fire. Of course, should the cloud attain sufficient size, it can generate lightning, and therefore further destruction.

I want to stay, but my concern for safety overrides this instinct. It is a shame I cannot witness the full course of my handiwork.