The Forest is Burning

The forest is burning. It has done so for 3 weeks now, a never-ending blaze boiling away the rain until all that falls is grey ash, ash which lands on the smoke-choked body of a deer lying within the fire’s outer edges, its hair burned away and its insides gradually liquifying in the heat. Steam rises from her mouth; her eyes watch the incoming tide of saltwater.

A farmer stands, stock-still in their desiccated fields, and watches the fire grow inexorable. It has burned for 3 weeks now and will burn for 3 years more, or, just maybe, even longer. The flames have almost reached Cape Wrath, burning away the peat bogs and heather, leaving an empty hardpack wasteland behind them, birthing a land beyond a treeline defined by heat instead of cold.

Standing tall amongst the waves a turbine hums to itself, its rusting metal bulk readying itself to join wholly with the sea. A leatherback turtle glides around its base. To the west, far, far to the west, a stone stack stands silent, but the birds are coming. The surviving flocks of sea gulls, gannets and guillemots arrive, forcing themselves into the small spaces left for them, waiting out the flames that consume. The waves rise higher, covering more of the rock, until the stack tumbles down and the birds move on, desperate.

Southward and the land of lush green grass has turned a dried brown, the Gaeltacht lost under a fire of its own. All that stands above ankle height is a lonely tree, a few blossoms budding on its scrawny fingers.