[Seasonal] Short of Breath

While others watched the disaster unfold, from Raze’s perspective the wildfire appeared suddenly and without warning. What started as mere embers grew at an unfathomable pace to a raging inferno, but at the time he wasn’t concerned with keeping up with local news to know of it.

Raze didn’t notice the beginning of it, and barely woke soon enough to realize the situation unfolding around him. While he was hidden away to rest, smaller critters had long burrowed or flown away, and larger creatures long felt the pressure to flee as well. It was the acrid sting caught in his throat that made him alert to the chaos, and violently pushed him into motion.

Hacking and coughing the thin smoke out of his lungs, he didn’t waste time to abandon his hideout. By the time he darted between roots and low branches with jittery precision, the flames already began to tear into anything green and alive.

The forest around him gave a low, shuddering groan as a trunk split under heat, and even without glancing back he felt the pressure of rising air threatening to trap him here. A push of hot wind that prickled his skin threw hot cinders between foliage, daring to ignite anything ahead of him if he were particularly unlucky. The smoke thickened too quickly and every breath was a scrape. Every exhale came thin and fast.

The forest was on fire! It was ablaze! The tall trees and foliage around that once gave him safety were now being consumed to fuel the inferno. He had let his guard down. If he just stayed up, if he watched his surroundings instead of napping through half the event, then he could’ve at least planned his escape. With the way ahead morphed by the unpredictable whim of the fire, the best direction to take is away.

All that mattered was the space ahead of him, the dim pockets of air cool enough to breathe, and the next gap in the underbrush he could fit through.

He had no mind to worry if he was even going the wrong way or if the flames just happened to be faster than him. The fire closing in, hungry and relentless, made his feathers stand on end and his legs buckle for a just heartbeat before he pushed through the panic.

When a burning branch crashed down a few lengths to his right, embers scattered across the ground like teeth. Pain flared sharp and bright each footstep he took across, but he shook it off. The world tunneled into sensation. The crackle of bark collapsing behind him, the tremor of roots giving up their grip, the shifting colors of fire radiating out in the smoke-thick haze. If there was a path forward, he took it. If there wasn’t, he made one, squeezing past between thorny shrubs or bounding over fallen limbs with an awkward grace his limbs didn’t support. He’d even jump right through growing flames of freshly ignited foliage just to reach the less precarious spot behind it. Even when the smoke stung his eyes so badly he had to run half-blind and he wheezed though the smoke, he didn’t slow. 

When a burning tree fell onto the narrow trail he meant to slip through, he skidded to a halt just long enough to feel the shock flash through him. He wasn’t strong enough to shove his way through, not quite athletic enough to vault. But the underside of the trunk left a gap just barely large enough for something wiry and determined. If he were to take the seconds to think, he’d think himself too large not to get stuck, but his mind lagged behind when his body ordered action. He threw himself down, scraped belly-first under it, and ignored the way bark tore at his shoulders. Even turning to his side and scraping at the ground with his claws and feet, barely let him wiggle through with his feather coat as sacrifice.

He’d take bald spots over getting burned altogether anyhow.

When he finally burst into a corridor of thinner smoke and saw the hint of open space ahead, he didn’t linger on the hope that he was safe. His legs kept moving even as they trembled, his breaths coming in ragged pulls that burned all the way down. The heat clung to him like a second skin, and a hot ache coated his body. He wasn’t sure if it was from his scorched skin, scrapes and cuts he earned on his escape, or just the adrenaline failing him at his last spurt.

He spared it no thought. 

Pain meant he was still alive.

Only when the ground beneath his feet softened with the promise of soil too moist and cool to ignite, when the wind changed enough to strip away the worst of the smoke, did his pace falter into a stumbling, uneven trot. He didn’t look back once or worried about anyone possibly left in the fire. Whatever still burned behind him could burn. Whatever still called his name would have to wait. He had outrun the blaze by the thinnest sliver of luck, and that was enough. The ache would come later, but for now he kept moving forward.

(873 words according to Google Docs)