Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [2122]

There was nothing to do except keep going or burn. The terrible, deafening noise of the fire increased, then lessened, and again, increased, then lessened. It seemed that the fire went north away from the road, then whipped back down toward us. … It teased like a living, malevolent thing, intent on causing pain and terror. It drove us before it like dogs chasing a rabbit. Yet it didn’t eat us. It could have, but it didn’t. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 2122

Note

The chapter’s governing sentence (‘keep going or burn’) returns here as refrain, then the fire is personified as a conscious tormentor — and the personification is immediately undercut by the matter-of-fact ‘Yet it didn’t eat us.’ The rabbit and dog simile inverts who is what; the humans are prey and the fire is both hunter and, at the end, something inexplicably withholding.