Chapter Text
He leaves a trail, but he does not care.
He does not care if they can track him, if they can follow him, he just has to get there in time. He has to find her before the flames reach the house. He can’t lose his mom too.
He nearly slips on a rough snow covered stone, and his feet burn. Cuts from the rock and root, but he barely notices. He just has to get there in time. If he can just find his mom, then everything will be okay. She will scold him for being so foolish to run so far without shoes, but she will not be too mad. Because they will still have each other. Because they will have survived.
He just has to get there in time, before they can catch him again. Then things will be okay- not okay , the thought tears through his mind. It won’t be okay.
Nothing ever will be again. Because his father is gone. The flames came too fast.
He pushes himself faster, faster, he has to be faster than them now, so the flames will not find his mom before he does. And so they will not find him before he finds her.
He is almost there. The trees and paths are familiar now, but the red-orange-gold glow they are covered in is not. Even the snow glows hot with the glow.
The flames are almost here.
They can’t be at the house yet. They can’t. He has to beat them.
His lungs begin to burn more, now from the smoke too.
He is almost there.
He has to beat them. He is going to.
The paths and trees are more than familiar now, and glowing little sparkles float through the branches and bush, but they not fireflies this time.
He throws himself down the last hill, leaping recklessly like his mom always told him not to, like how his father always did to show off and tease her. He would always laugh, watching his father tease and his mother sigh, secretly amused too. But there is no scolding, no laughing now.
He risks a glance up towards his house and the encircling hills, and just as quickly as he looks, he tears his eyes back to the path. The hills were crowned in flame. But there was a little dark spot in the valley without any flame, dimly reflecting the glow. The roof.
He does not think of how the house is in the center of this little valley. How it is in the middle of a ring of fire. He just has to find his mom, and then they will be together and she will know what to do.
The wind gusts, and he prays to the gods his uncle told him about, begging that it blow out the flames.
But the roar of the fire grows louder, as the scream of a dragon whose maw is about to close.
Just a little faster. He leaps onto the last bend of the path.
Just one more grove of trees. Apple and pear, that his parents planted shortly before his birth.
Some of the trees burn. He hears them snap and pop as the flame begins to devour them. They will not bear flowers in the spring. Nor fruit in the autumn.
He remembers gathering pile upon pile of them to shower on his unsuspecting parents heads during picnics. He remembers strong hands lifting him to reach the highest fruits.
He hears one of the trees creak and fall, sending a storm of sparks like snowflakes towards the house.
He is almost there, he can almost make out the door. The trees behind the house are aflame, but he is faster. He will beat them to the house-
He nearly falls in shock as he finally sees the house. It’s windows glow like the trees and snow but brighter, so much brighter. Flames lick the North and West walls.
But the roof was not aflame when he saw it from the hill, how could the house already be burning? His feet carry him towards the door, and he startles as something falls and shatters before his feet. A tile from the roof. The roof is stone- slate, he remembers. It would not burn.
He is at the door. He has to keep moving, to be fast, faster than the flame, he has to reach his mom first and then they can leave the house together on a new journey, one last time.
His hand freezes before touching the door handle. He can feel the heat radiating off it.
He makes a slit second decision and rams the door open with his shoulder, sending wood splinters and sparks, more sparks, flying into the house and the fire reaches greedily inside.
A window shatters, and all thought leaves him. She was inside, his mom was inside, waiting for him, but now he is here and she needs to get out. He leaps over a burning beam, a beam that was not on the floor yesterday but holding the roof, and he kicks aside a burning chair where she once sat telling him stories, racing through to the back of the house, unheeding the burning walls, and the floor that is starting to catch.
He flies through the kitchen, eyes wildly searching, but she is not there.
The bedrooms, the only place.
He ignores his room, and races to hers. Faster than the flames.
She had to be in there, trying to break the window to get out. But that window was too small, but that was okay because he was here and he would help her out now.
The door is open slightly, the corner burning, and he shoves it in as he enters.
He does not see her. He steps across the room now, slow compared to the race here. He sees the shattered window, and knows she could not have gotten through it alone.
He circles the bed, which has taken hold of a few little flames.
He kneels to look under the bed as they grow. She is not there.
She is not in here, where, where- his room! He went right past, once again he flies out of the room, he is about to force the door in, she is in there, his mom is in there, there is no doubt, even as the flames painting the walls grow and he feels the heat in his bones.
But then there is a hand on his arm, and he is pulled away from the door.
He screams, no, no she is in there! I just have to open the door, she is there!
But his screams fall on ears deafened by the roaring flame.
He strikes at the hand, the arm, the man holding him- Candion, the one who took his shoes. But surely he must see now, she is here, they just have to open the door and they can all escape together.
But Candion’s eyes are sad and frigid, and before he can try to convince him, he throws him over his shoulder and turns back towards the front of the house, the door, the way out.
He screams again, he kicks and punches but the man is unflinching and runs for the door with all his strength as they both hear the beams of the roof start to crack.
Gildor did not even know he could move that fast but Candion throws them both out the door as the final crack sounds, then there is a gut-wrenching moan as the roof falls, and its impact with the ground, and the shattering tiles are louder than the roar of the flaming valley.
He screams, she was there, she was there, my mom was in there! She was just behind the door!
Candion shakes his head as Gildor sobs, and he picks him off the ground again.
He does not kick or punch this time. He only stares at the receding form of the roof, until it is hidden by flame and he can see it no longer.