Vulcan

Tonight Puy-de-Dome's silhouette was bold as ink against a cyan sky that tinged yellower as the sun set, like the pages of an old book. The peak was shrouded by a thin shred of cloud, billowing off like smoke from a factory chimney. Its edges burnt with the sun's red glow. The overall effect was beautiful, yet sublimely terrifying; it looked as if the volcano had woken from its slumber.

Imagine if it had! Seven thousand years dormant, sleeping through the millennia of humans climbing its vast back. Romans carving roads, and building temples; millions of shepherds herding billions of sheep; Scientists building antennae and hang-gliders gently hang-gliding off it. And now, all of a sudden, stirring from deep sleep, magma building in its deep belly like burning bile, an indigestion no Milk of Magnesia could quell.

Imagine if it erupted. Imagine if the lava rolled down the mountainside consuming everything in its path, engulfing houses and turning green pines into frizzled matchsticks. Imagine if the sky turned black and red and grey ash rained down on a grey city. If the lava flowed all the way down the valley to flow in Clermont's streets, to course over cobbles of volcanic rock and lap at basalt steps, lava on lava, hot on cold. People would run screaming for high ground, and hide from the lava in the lava cathedral, safe in its cool lava bowels.

In the streets, like those of Pompeii, would lie lava people. Stone dogs attached to stone punks. Stone beggars holding stone cups. Stone pigeons on my windowsill. Cold lava stone like the city's streets and steps and walls.