Fire had taken over. It was too late to try to save the books. Paper well preserves ideas. But it is also easy prey for hungry fire. The more fire takes inside, the more it desires and it never stops until there is nothing more to swallow. Nothing burns better than paper. With the sound of sirens, he turned around and noticed that the firemen had finally arrived. He gave a bitter smile and turned back again staring at the flames reaching out of the windows and the black smoke rising from every corner of his bookstore. Standing still right in front of his burning store, he was ignorant of the rapidly growing crowd around him and the agitated firemen rushing back and forth trying to control the rapidly spreading fire. The occasional wind and now the pressure of water poured by the firefighters was spreading ashes and burnt pieces of his books in the air, the books that he had deliberately sorted and resorted all through his life. The sky above him was full of tiny pieces of paper, like a crowd of half-burnt butterflies flying in fright and scattering away from one another. He remembered the first books his father gave him from the same shelves he took out books to read for his little daughter. He was imagining his memories and his past turning into little pieces in the same manner as his books were burning inside his store. Water was finally winning over the fire and the blackened walls of his store could now be seen. The air felt hot and humid and smelled like burnt paper, like burnt memories. Flying pieces of paper were now falling down like small autumn leaves in a deciduous forest being hit by the first cold breeze of November. He leaned down and picked up a piece of burnt paper and turned it around. ‘farewell’. He looked back up to the store and stared at it for a few seconds. He finally stood up slowly and gently not to lose all the ashes in his hair and strolled down the paved street.
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