From the air, Christos can see the rust-covered border fence; broken barbed wire splayed open too late to save anyone. There’s history there. The back and forth of people over time. The shifting of territory. The howl of angry men with guns chasing people guilty of a common crime these days; seeking freedom.
     Now, the sentry box is alive with flame. In another moment, maybe he would smile to see it burn, but everything around it has been taken too. They say these cages were built to save us, instead they trap us with all this damage that we’ve done. There are tears in his eyes as he flies over the devastation, removed from the danger but not from the fact.
     An alarm sounds. His water tanks are empty. There is nothing more he can do. He banks the plane. Broken red tiled roofs are scattered below him. He sees an old man bent as if weeping, a woman with her arm around him. The wild fire has no doubt taken his home; the summer eaten his life.
     Hectares of forest are gone - wild cherry, oak and beech, hornbeam, juniper, and Norwegian spruce. Even from up here the air is scented with their decimated carcasses; their trunks’ split from the heat straight down to their ancient middles. He thinks of the animals, but his eyes burn once more so he stops himself. He flies over a riverbed, dry, and follows it to the sea to scout the damage, procrastinating, hesitant to land.
     Plastic wrap in many colours laps at the beach. He knows that down there, amongst the debris, there must be bodies. The fire is burning too fast and they are moving too slowly. Deep inside him he feels defeat, nothing he can do will help, the cause is lost, the world is gone. It was all too late. He rams his fist into the glass that protects him hoping to cause himself pain.
     Through radio static he hears a call - return to base – raised voices discernible behind it. He knows them all, conscripts just like him. Eleni? The signal fails. Silence. He swoops back to find the runway burning. The watchtower; a smouldering monument. He’s been in the air too long, but the truth is he feels safer here.
     He thinks of Eleni’s laugh, it stops his breath. He circles back, trying to understand what is happening, trying to see through the smoke. He glimpses survivors clambering into a truck and oxygen fills his lungs again.
     He climbs. He must survive if only to find out if she has. In the distance there is a spot of green, bigger than the lone trees that have endured despite the flames. He heads towards it, hope and fear argue in his chest. Between two rows of trees there is a field, and maybe there is length enough to land a small plane like his. His fuel gauge dips, he has reached the very last of his chances.
     The engine shudders. The descent is inevitable. He takes a deep breath as if plunging not into flame but into water. An image comes of his childhood. His grandfather crying over a failed crop, the heat too much already.
     He had turned to Christos and spoken through tears,
     ‘It is you who will have to bear this my boy.’