This girl is on fire

Weariness had forced the determined young Ademre to take shelter for the night. She had stretched out beneath a gnarled old tree and fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep almost immediately. No doubt she would have slept well into the morning had not the smell of smoke drug her awake.

Groggily Amaretto sat up and looked around. The world around her was hazy and shapeless so she blinked rapidly to clear to the sleep from her eyes. When her vision did not clear and the reason for the smoke finally clicked, fear lanced through her heart. There was smoke in the air. She could not see because it was all around her. It rolled across the ground as a shapeless, heavy cloud and the air was thick with its acrid odor. Why hadn't she woken up sooner?

Clumsily she got to her paws and began to hobble away from the tree. Her legs were stiff and unruly thanks to the events of the previous day, but she ignored their protests and pressed on anyway. Amaretto had too; she had no idea where the fire was or how much danger she was in, but if she had her guess the answers were 'nearby' and 'a lot' so it was in her best interest to get moving. She had never dealt with fire before, had she? Though she had no memories to contradict that, she didn't feel like she had. Surely she would know, wouldn't she? She would know in the same way she knew her name, knew Lament's name and knew how to track him. Right?

Okay, think. What did she do next. There was fire around here somewhere and obviously she needed to get away from it, but she could not see it or anything else around her. How did she get away from something she could not see? Well... the smoke was sticking close to the ground, right? Maybe if she went to high ground she could see over it and that would give her a sense of what she was up against. It was not the best plan, but it was all she had at the moment and she did not know much time she had to look around.

Amaretto squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. Think. The tallest thing around was probably a hill or a tree and she wasn't exactly a cat so the trees were out. But where were the hills? She hadn't made note of them before going to sleep. But there had been one because she could remember climbing it and grumbling under the weight of her fatigue. It was close. Think. Which direction?

The tree was directly behind her and she had pretty much laid down with her face pointing in the direction she had been heading towards, which meant that if she hadn't moved around much in the night the hill was somewhere to her left. Right? Yeah, that had to be it. Her forepaws had been butted up against the rocks just like they had when she had laid down. Left it was.

The smoke stung her eyes and throat, and though she found herself coughing and tearing up, she continued on. Her ears strained for the sound of crackling wood (a sound she remembered somehow? She'd given up trying to understand her holey memory at this point.) or the hiss of fire gnawing at underbrush, but she could hear little over the roar of her heart in her ears and it was hard to tell what she was really hearing. It was a hunch but she knew the mind had a way of trying to make sense where there was none to be made; that it could take little snippets of information and make them into something they weren't. Amaretto thought she heard crackling, but was it the snap and hiss of fire or the moan of wind through dry grasses? She couldn't say and she wasn't enough of a gambler to think she was safe to relax.

She was definitely going up an incline - the ache in her legs made that quite clear. That knowledge gave her hope so she picked up the pace. By now her legs had limbered up some and the stiffness in her joints had faded. With the promise of understanding within reach Amaretto was willing to ignore the ache that remained. Her haste was rewarded by the receding of the smoke. The higher she climbed the thinner it got until finally she stood on the crest of the hill and the field was laid bare before her.

Amaretto could see the fire. Down the hill and on the side opposite of the one she had climbed, the flames were busy working on the grass. There wasn't much down there for it to eat. No trees or large shrubbery at least. There was, however, plenty of grass and that was what was putting off so much smoke. All in all she was relieved by the scale of it. With the wind in her favor she could out run it no problem...

Her heart sank as her gaze roved to the right. The field may have been all grassland, but on her side of the hill the trees were beginning to catch fire. She continued to look around, her gaze slowly roving over the way she had come. What she saw made her heart leap into her throat. Amaretto knew immediately that she should have gone the other direction. There was no way she could have known that the fire had spread around the place she had slept in a wide 'C' shape. She couldn't have known that the only way out was the exact opposite of the way she had gone.

Fearing the fire now more than the angry protests of her wounds, Amaretto dashed down the hill. She streaked through the smoke like a bolt of lighting, her paws seeming to barely touch the ground as she ran towards the wall of fire and the pathway to freedom it was about to swallow up. Her lungs quickly filled with smoke causing her breath to come in ragged gasps. She felt as though she might smother and dimly (and morbidly) wondered if drowning offered a similar experience. This was the only way; she had seen no other. She had to make it because it was only a matter of time before the fire chewed its way up the hill and through her.

The ground underfoot became hot as she was forced to walk through patches of scorched earth. Her pads stung as embers were crushed beneath them and ash was pressed into the tender, weepy new wounds. There was no other way; pain or no pain she had to keep going. Amaretto was blinded by the smoke and operating solely on instinct. The fear that she wouldn't make it clawed at her throat.

Through the haze she spied what looked like the opening and, seeing no good alternatives, Amaretto ran for it. A wall of dark smoke suddenly blocked her path, but she knew what she'd seen so she ran into it without hesitation. She was almost there. Freedom was within reach. By now the tears ran freely from her eyes and nose. She couldn't have stopped them if she'd wanted to and though the clouded her vision there was no time to wipe them away.

Just when Amaretto thought she'd made a fatal mistake by pressing through the wall of smoke, the air cleared before her. Again her heart leaped into her throat, but this time it was with joy. She'd made it. She was out. Of course she wasn't out of danger yet, the fire was still on her heels, but with open ground before her she knew she could make it. Onward she ran. She had a brother to track down.