The Amber City

PROMPT: The city blazed amber, but it wasn’t the brightness that made me look away. It was a thought that my brother had done this

“Sienna!” Aqua yelled. Her face was inches away from mine, panicked. She grabbed my shoulders and shook me violently, as if trying to get me out of a daze.

“We need to run, Sienna.”

I was in no daze. I could hear her as clearly as I could see the raging flames in front of me. The flames that had engulfed the city faster than gossip. Five seconds. That’s all it took me to realise the situation we were in and look away from the blazed amber longing for the skies. But it might as well have been an eternity. The flames were barely a mile away from the public park we were having a picnic in. So much for a fun time.

The flames may not have reached us yet, but the smoke? It needed no medium to push itself forward, it just sprinted wherever it pleased. Normally, the smoke would have risen to the skies, however the windy day had pushed it southward and to where we were.

I tried to move, but my feet were paralyzed. It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t acceptance of doom’s day, but the realization. The heart-wrenching realization, that hit me at the speed of a fighter jet, that this horrid picture that I was watching, was painted by none other than my own older brother. The brother I had always looked up to.

“Sienna! Please! We need to leave!” She was in tears as her eyes swiftly scanned mine own and the incoming flames. “We can’t die here!!!” I noticed how her voice was shaky and how the skin under her eyes had turned red from holding back tears of fear. Mine stung like crazy too.

Because if it was indeed my brother who had started the fire, he must have been the first to be engulfed by it.

His rebellious fight against that tyrannical firm had pushed him too far.

And now…

Now what?

What the hell did he gain from this? A couple thousand innocent deaths? He…

How could he…?

“Sienna?” Aqua’s eyes were filled with even more panic than before. I could see why. I could feel the heat of the flames warming the cold winter evening. The shine of the flames that engulfed the tree barely a few feet away from us. Sienna’s cries as she tried to pull me up by my hand and how I helplessly stood up and ran along with her.

As we sprinted across the garden, I turned to look at the amber behind me and my throat, my eyes and my nose stung almost venomously as I left the city that slowly turned to ash.