“Chronicles of Fire” by Wilhelm de Beer.
“Nothing in life is ever quite as it seems.”
The shadow fell across their path from nowhere like a hackneyed cliché slipping
into a conversation. One moment they were captives inside their bubble of love - the next
it had burst and they were torn apart. Neither even had time to realize what had hit them.
For what it’s worth, it was a horse and trailer. It had approached the blind hairpin in
the pass well within the speed limit, in lowest gear and under exhaust break, but at the
very moment the driver had begun to wrestle the steering wheel to turn sharp right, the
left front tire had burst. The behemoth had veered to the left across the solid white line
that split the blacktop longitudinally in both directions for as far as one cared to look,
taking it directly into their path. There had been no time for either driver to react.
Milliseconds later, a mangled metal mess toppled over the precipice into the canyon.
