The Aftermath of Burning

Fog crawled desultorily from the lake, dancing languidly amongst the trees. The pines stood tall and sombre, bearing their vaporous shrouds of mourning with a sense of solemnity. The sun was wearily retreating beyond the looming trees, its last feeble beams grasping desperately to the darkening clouds, framing them in warm opalescent hues. I sat dourly amid the lingering ashes of what once was and gazed into the inky waters of what could have been, a harsh juxtaposition to the iridescence of the sky. I came here out of an ingrained sense of duty, just I always would, although now I was greeted only by the aloof pines, painted silhouettes of the ephemeral dreams we once had. We wove our futures from the gossamer silk of a spider’s web; we indulged in opulence, mistaking our grandiose delusions for reality. Somewhere along our carefree, halcyon path we took a wrong turn, following instead the mellifluous voice of deceit and duplicity. We became inure and lassitude, entangled in our own labyrinthine web of fraudulence.
This bucolic Eden had once been a cynosure in my life, but I could now see how painfully and obviously fleeting our paradise had been. I had been warned again and again about the spuriousness of his nature, of the hollowness between his ribs. Everyone had been so preoccupied with turning him into the villain, that they had overlooked the fallacy of my own devotion. The pine trees, once warm and inviting friends, now regarded me with an imposing gaze of resentment and disappointment. This had been their home too. I wondered if they felt the same crushing, overwhelming sense of Hiraeth as I. The terrible, aching, longing to return to a place that had long since been incinerated. Even the lake had grown murky and veiled, the cerulean pool now darkened by the charcoal we used as fuel for our own fiery destruction.
A few lone birds invaded my solitude, singing of an ineffable sorrow. Their odes brimmed with woebegone tales of epochs that were killed before their birth, of heroes chasing after the lilting whispers of their own inevitable demise. With the cooling ashes of what once was settling on my skin, I gazed into the inky waters of what could have been. I no longer recognized the haunted, pallid face staring back at me.