Conflagrate Probate

Sitting by a fire gives one perspective. The small sounds of wind in leaves and insects chirruping soothes. In the moonlight every shadow is bottomless, every angle softened. Fireflies dance in the breeze very much like the embers spiraling up from the nearby glowing pile of logs. The wavering circle of light creates a pocket of your night, this microcosm of serenity walled by solidifying darkness. The fire is warm, communal and comforting.

Anyone would be reluctant to admit, in that calm little place, that there are things in the darkness that want to end you. Nothing more than glinting teeth and glowing eyes slowly circling your makeshift hearth. Nearly inaudible snuffling sounds as the scent of your flame-warmed flesh is carried by the night breeze.

No supply of firewood is without limit. Soon you will run out. Perhaps the hunger of those watching you will overpower their desire to cause you to suffer for the distinct insult they've suffered at your hand. How dare you bring warmth and comfort to this, their place of savage austerity and feral grace? Keep the fire lit, stoke it with care. The longer they wait, the quicker your pain will end.

Thus the natural order is maintained. Comfort, peaceful serenity and contentedness offend the forces that be. That we should take it upon ourselves to believe that we have any right to feel that we are the masters of this or any domain is, in a word, hubris. Gunpowder, Drywall and the Internal Combustion Engine have lulled us into the firm belief that the rest of our little blue-green ball of life and death is subservient to us.

Man has simply outmaneuvered his predators to the top of the food chain.

At some point, they might want that position back.