The Barn Fire.

Once water from the thirty foot jet seeps down your arm and the errant spray makes its way down your back through the layers of your tunic, it matters not if it rains, for you are already wet. The thrust of ten bars of pressure adds weight to the cold steel of the branch as you and your number two lean into each other for support, and after the initial adrenalin rush of the fire, tediousness sets in. The first hour soon passes into the second, and the second into the third, and soon you are caught in a silent fight. Just you and the flames, all thoughts are gone from your head, brainwashed in a back numbing, arm aching battle. A battle which sees flame turn into smoke, smoke into steam, steam into sweat, and as night turns into day, barn into twisted iron and blackened beam. Pools of hideous black water form behind dams of debris and lap around your boots, and your water logged gloves add a cold shower of drips as you flex your cramped hands, wrinkled and sore with constant immersion. Under your smoked tunic the once flame warmed sweat turns cold and the now soaked material of your under shirt sticks to your skin, constricting all warmth from your tired torso as every movement sends clandestine shivers circulating malevolently around every inch of your body. Embers dance upwards in the morning breeze as the last remnants of the fire drift into nothingness. The deflated hoses lay like licentious red contours snaking their way around the smouldering detritus of the hay barn, their very life blood, freely spilt in the fight lays spent in muddy puddles all around. Reflections flash red and blue in the frigid water and for the first time you hear the birds come alive in the breaking light.
Across the way a vixen slinks her way home to her cubs as the rooks jostle noisily in their high trees, and a blanket of mist hangs low in the valley. It glows a soft orange, as the rest of the town wakes up to a new day, unaware of the fight that had taken place. Unaware of the flames that engulfed the barn, unaware of the twisted steel and grotesque galvanised that now hangs metamorphic from irrecoverable stanchions swaying in the breeze. On the way back to the station house the first signs of life are beginning to stir, the milk herd ambling towards the parlour, the steely tom cat scratching at the door, the bakers van on the morning delivery, and the newsagent opening up to today's news waiting in piles on the doorstep. The promise of warm tea and a shower awaits but not before the hoses are washed and stowed away, not before all the equipment is cleaned and counted, and radios put on charge. You go about your tasks rendered silent by lack of sleep, rolling hose after hose like an automaton devoid of any thought or feeling other than that of that tea, that shower, that warm bed.
The fire fight is already just another memory as you walk home, but the smell of soot and smoke still persists about your very skin and hair, and despite your best efforts in the shower it still betrays your presence as you silently make your way up the stairs and slip into bed.