The Clearing - A Place in My Heart

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A dried branch snaps as the weight of my body presses down on it. I look around. This place used to be my favorite spot, ever since I was a child. Radiant sunlight would filter through healthy green leaves, setting the whole clearing alight with dancing beams. Towering above everything else, the trees stood tall and majestic, lining the little space.

A few meters ahead, running directly through the clearing, flowed a glimmering stream. Sunlight reflected off of the pristine water, the trickling was the music to which the sunbeams danced. I would walk over and sit by the stream, sometimes closing my eyes and listening. In the brook swam little fish, while frogs croaked in the reeds on each riverbed.

Most tranquil of all was the grassy ground. Strange, to think that the meadow was the most calming feature of the peaceful spot. The earth was flat and even, and apart from the path all the dirt was covered by the bright green blades of grass that I found comfortable to lie down on.

Every so often a bird would dash through the trees, streaks of blue and red catching my attention against the green curtain of the forest. Chirps and animal calls resounded throughout the space, and the crisp, fresh, clean smell was so strong that I could almost taste the purity in the wondrous scene as I would lay there.


After the Scorching, everything changed. What were once tall majestic trees are
now burnt stumps and diseased trunks. The once dancing sunlight now sits still, glowing with a sickly luminescence. A once pristine stream runs at my feet, carrying pale green water, diseased all the way. The trickling, which once resembled music, now sounds more like the scraping of bones to my ears.

No longer do fish swim through the river, no longer do frogs croak in the reeds, no longer do birds dash through the canopy and chirp their beautiful symphonies. The lush green curtain has been ripped and torn down around me, exposing a burnt forest of cinders. The earth is now black and barren, uneven due to the piles of ash that sit scattered around the place. A gust of wind brings the taste of soot to my mouth and the reek of death.

No longer does this spot hold any resemblance to that special place in my memory, in my heart. This place, devoid of life, is barely recognizable as the clearing it was not too long ago. The healthy green colors have left, replaced by the dirty blacks and browns. As I lie down on the earth now as I did then I find no comfort. Instead, I feel only the dead sticks that are strewn about the place like graves poking into my back, a constant reminder of what happened to this place.