I stepped outside and was greeted with a frightening sight: great columns of thick white smoke billowed up out of the landscape and reached as high as my eye could see. Slothin and environs was burning up.
I think I stared at the smoke for a long time, perhaps two or three minutes. My response was completely counterproductive, of course, but I didn’t know what else to do. The fires were burning in all directions. Everywhere I looked smoke filled the sky. As far as I could tell, the fires were not in the city of Slothin, but they certainly were gobbling up the countryside.
Was this why everyone had left? They knew the fires were coming?
That couldn’t be. Wouldn’t someone have told us? Wouldn’t the prime minister have helped us evacuate, rather than leave us in the mausoleum overnight onl
