Ouch. Personal experience?

I was going to tease your Australian self for “metres,” but this piece is too somber for that. The funny thing is that I’m going camping soon at a site I have to drive through a once-burnt-out forest to get to.

The anorexic fingers are a disturbing but effective image.

The shift from “you” (replacing “one,” I suppose) to “he” threw me just a bit. Actually, “threw” is the wrong word. The “he” that comes in near the end surprised me, as if a character had suddenly stepped out from behind one of the trees.

This is from personal experience, Jester, as the major fires reported around the world earlier this year were where I used to live, and where my mum and dad still do. They were lucky their house survived, but many hundreds of others didn’t. And I do love the area with a passion that I found hard to describe.

My parents slept on the football ground the night of the fires and were escorted down the mountain by police the next day. When they went back up a week later, I went with them and stayed for a week to help them get re-settled. It was unsettling, yet uplifting also, as so many people supported and connected through the tragedy.

Re: you and he, we speak in terms of “you” for “one” so much that it is difficult to think otherwise sometimes, however I thought I had changed that, but obviously I hadn’t. If you count the words there should be 100 exactly as it is another of my pieces for 100words.com, and I was proud of it.

Thanks for the pickup and the support.

“Anorexic fingers” and “matchstick landscape” both paint a grim picture very well. The detail of the untouched leaves is the kind of thing that someone simply imagining the scene would probably miss altogether. It lends authenticity and also captures the sense of bewilderment.

Thanks for the background information as well – it’s good to know where the stories come from sometimes.

The brevity is surprisingly effective as well. 100 words gives a complete picture. And it’s noticeable that there are no living things except the observer and, by reference only, the arsonist at the end.