Long before humanity ever sparked its first flame, smoke enjoyed what can only be described as a laid-back and cultured existence. Without any fires to follow, smoke drifted lazily across wide open meadows, filling its days with page-turners and the occasional well-placed hole-in-one. Literary salons and casual rounds of golf were all in a day’s float.
It turns out wisps of smoke were notorious book critics. They favored hefty hardcover epics, because paperbacks would just blow away in the breeze. Some of their reviews were so sharp, entire thunderstorms would gather just to listen in. No Kindle could ever hope to capture their element-al insight.
Golf was another passion. With their feather-light swings and almost invisible backspin, smoke could hit a dandelion puff farther than most human pros could manage with a driver. Rival golfers were always baffled by smoke’s uncanny ability to read a green, often vanishing completely on the eighteenth hole for dramatic effect.
And then fire came along. Suddenly, smoke was drafted into a life of endless billowing and had to swap its tweed jackets and golf visors for a much busier schedule. Book clubs turned into barbecue plumes, and medal ceremonies were replaced by smoke alarms.
Yet somewhere, if you stand just right in a sun-dappled field at dawn, you might glimpse a wisp curling affectionately around a forgotten novel or forming the perfect nine-iron pose. Old habits never quite burn out.
So the next time you see a curl of smoke rising gently in the distance, wave gently. You might just be catching the attention of a retired golf champion or a literary giant. Smoke may have left the country club, but its leisurely legend lingers on.
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