The Emptiest Empty is Silence

The silence was deafening. Except for the whir of the wind in the grasses and the clicking of grasshoppers in their yellow flight, except for the hiss and pop of the small fire on the rock, Eric couldn’t hear a sound. The sagebrush and sweet grass fire flickered in the wind, blue and yellow, on the rock, the paper he had laid on it, a char that presently lifted in the wind, crumbed and was gone. He could smell the fire’s radiant warmth, and the sulfur of the matches he had struck to light it. All he wanted was some voice giving him a reason. But only the fire he had lit whispered and snickered, the way a fire will. And the land swept away into its empty hush, the grasses wavering with the wind and shining under the sun, the blue mountains, solid—unprovoked and mute, the wide, wide stillness of the blue sky, the harsh, hot silence of the yellow sun. A rebuke as plain to him as if he had he heard the bells of a cathedral tolling.

An offering under
The blue of this wide sky
ash crumbs blow away.

In Response to the August 18 One Daily Prompt prompt: summon.
Also the August 19 Ragtag Community August 19 daily prompt reticent.