A cloudscape floated over the grill cart, tempting a salivating barbecue for the sausage-craving farmer. Kamuti was a Grade-A braai master. 

He fancied red-hot coals under the snake-thin sausages. Then he wielded a No.4 axe, and took to the Kalahari. A silver-grey tree, acting like a one-star hostel for the green-tail birds, spookily drew his attention. 

Kamuti chopped the pale tree, and littered the birds’ nests all over the Kalahari. The ash-blonde hair man cuts a leafy, but barbed thorn branch. “Why cutting me?” asked Mr Firewood. 

He chained the firewood, and tossed the bundle over his shoulder. 

“We fall off because of the blustery wind, not by battle-axe,” sobbed the ash wood. Then Kamuti massaged a needle-piercing pinch on his shoulder. He shuffled his feet and recited swearwords at the nipping firewood. Soon he rested on his heels, and filed the skin-clipping thorns off the firewood. “Look at this hill of white sand!” howled Mr Firewood, dripping tears on Kamuti’s shoulder. The ash-key firewood grieved about the windblown ash. 

“My tribe turns your sausages wood-brown, yet you brag about gold medals,” snuffled Mr Firewood. 

Kamuti raised his eyebrows, and a blue vein popped on his forehead. Afterwards, he hacked the needle-piercing firewood after it clipped his Nike polo neck. 

“You broke my torso!” sniffed the blood-oozing firewood. 

By noon, Kamuti picked up that the death-cheating firewood had grown tapering roots. The Meat-n-Beer titleholder dropped the cracking firewood into the blue and yellow flame. 

“You’ve poached the 100-year-old tree,” moaned the flickering firewood. 

Finally, Kamuti strangled the protesting stumpy of the firewood, but a black-tailed scorpion loafing under the stubby firewood stung him. 

“That’s the price for chopping endangered species,” cried the burning firewood. 

“I’m not a dead wood like your ex!” wailed Mr Firewood, giggling at the woozy man. 

The shaking man tripped over his own shadow, tiptoeing forward and backwards, before burying the firewood beneath the hazards flashing coals. He had overcooked the peppery sausages and tumbled over a mountain of ash. After two minutes, the scorpion’s toxin had spread through his whitish body. Fast-forward, his ashen-faced body was escorted to the cremation hut. The ash-coloured tree had fallen, while the fire-marching grass hymned funeral songs. 

In the end, a lightning spark kindled bushfires, shaping waves of white sand in the form of ashes.