Fire... It burned. More than she thought it would have. The flames licked at her skin, her hair. The flesh on her arms began to sizzle. Pain spiked through her, but it wasn't the worst she had ever felt. She ran.

The air, luscious air, blew on her hot skin, a soothing balm to her burnt nerves. She wanted to stop and suck in lungfuls of the wonderful stuff, but her smoky air passages would have to wait. It was more important to run than to breathe.

Her feet pounded on the ground, over and over as she ran. Fast, faster, fastest. Still, it wasn't fast enough. The sirens that split the air with their terrible screeches were still audible to her ears. Her feet were aching, arms still tingling from the fire, and lungs still screaming for more oxygen. She ran faster.

She ran, ran, ran, until the rolling hills, the sirens, the smoke, the heat all faded away behind her. She ran until the roar of cars rumbling past filled her ears, and the soft grass and crunchy leaves under her feet turned into unforgiving asphalt.

Finally, finally, as the sun began to sink low in the sky, she stopped, collapsing onto the ground, and sucked in deep breaths of the stuff her lungs craved. It may have been minutes or hours that she just sat on the sidewalk, breathing and breathing, but by the time her heart had calmed to a reasonable pace, and her lungs stopped aching, the sun had sunk fully below the horizon and plunged the world in a soft blanket of velvety twilight.

It was right about then that she realized she was in a big city. Alone. In the middle of the night with no where to go.

Most would have cried then, but her eyes stayed dry. Not a tear would grace her face for something as little as this; she had worse things to cry over. So, dry eyed and dry mouthed, she climbed behind a dumpster before falling into the sweet release of unconsciousness.