Warm winds . She thought when she emerged from the gate . First thought . Quickly changed to hot wind. Oh ,oh , really hot winds. It was like putting her whole self into a mildly hot oven . The winds entered her nostrils and dried the walls up . It blew grit and sand into her already tearing eyes, inside the goggles . It seared her arms as she held the handlebars, and it entered her loose T-shirt and cooked her skin from the inside . The scalp kept cool , thanks to the helmet .
A layer of fine , salty , dust settled on the parched lips . Her throat was already craving a bottle of chilled water . She wondered if , in a matter of days , she would turn brown baked and leathery , wrinkled like the people who sped past her , on her bikes , totally oblivious to the heat , sun , dust and grit .
Sun had turned everything luminous , incandescent , glowing . Crops wilted in the parched fields . Roadside bushes all dried up. Dry kindling . Someone set fire to an abandoned plot next to her home last evening . She watched mesmerised , as a small leaf shaped tongue of fire , quickly engulfed the entire plot. Fanned by hot winds , turned a patch of peaceful bushes into a roaring , hungry , crackling inferno . When the flames lit up her walls in flickers of orange tongues , that the horror crept in . But someone had already brought a bucket of water . Next morning ,an ugly patch of black remained ,smouldering ominously at the edges , and the grey ash floated into the balcony , settling on her potted plants , laundry and chairs.
The bush ash swirled in small waves in the corner of the house , come riding on the hot tropical summer wind.
