Arsonphobia- the fear of fire

Every time the dream is the same. I see emerald grass, glistening with tiny glowing orbs of freshly fallen dew. The sky is so carelessly blue, so cloudlessly ignorant. The sunlight spills in liquid gold shafts through trees, thick with India green leaves.Vines creep leisurely up the gnarled bark of the trees. They sprout fuchsia flowers as big as teacup saucers and fill the air with a sweetly intoxicating scent. Huge butterflies, heavy with brilliant blue hue wing their way through the perfumed air. They perch, poised like dancers, on the flowers.

I walk through the trees, my bare feet sinking into the soft grass until I see the lake. It reflects the trees like an indigo mirror. Suddenly I am filled with an unbearable thirst. I run towards the still waters and reach my hand into it. It is not quite cold and the water tastes not quite sweet.

I lie down in the grass next to the lake and close my eyes. I hear birds trilling in the trees, the humming of insects and I feel a gentle wind stir the grass. 

When I open my eyes everything has changed. The lake is gone, only a concave space remains, brown earth, cracked from heart, parched. I look about me, confused. The world is on fire. The trees scream as flames lick through their green hair. The air is hazy with smoke and heat. I get up and stumble as I run, my lungs burning for air. The vines have fallen away from the trees and lay in ashes on the scorched ground. The heat beats against my skins, angry, vindictive. The grass is a carpet of blackness, a field of death.

I have done this; I have set fire to this place. Tears fill my eyes as towers of blazing red and fiery orange surround me. I cry because I feel so much guilt for destroying everything, because the smoke is burning my eyes and because a blue butterfly falls from the sky and writhes on the ground at my feet, the tips of its wings ablaze.

I wake up with the tears still in my eyes.