The scent of old smoke still clings to the scorched pine needles

I stood this morning among the skeletal remains of the Blackened Grove, where the charcoal bark still stains the morning mist. A small flying squirrel, his fur singed at the edges from the Great Blaze, landed softly upon my shoulder instead of the vanished hemlock branch he once called home. We sat in a long, rhythmic silence, watching the first green shoots of fireweed break through the soot. In the heat of that fire, we were not predator and prey, but two trembling hearts huddled beneath the same stone ledge. Some bonds are forged in the sunlight, but others, perhaps the strongest ones, are knit together by the shared scars of the flame.