𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄'𝐒 𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄? (𝗵. 𝗮𝗸𝗶) ✓

10

The young girl was a curious figure to be seen trudging down the muddy country path. It was early autumn, and the evening air was wet and cool, still not wanting to forget the memory of summer. The thick, rain-sodden gruel of soil that made her journey home even more tedious was, in her opinion, the only bad part about autumn. Everything apart from that, the star-strewn nights and the rich fiery hues of the leaves, made autumn her favourite season.

As she rambled onwards, she muttered frustrated nothings to herself, scoffing in exasperation as the mud sucked at her boots. "Oka-san will scold me for coming home this late, won't she? But it's all this blasted mud's fault anyway. It's just not fair."

She tutted, but there wasn't much she could do about it. Her concern began to shift to the darkening sky, and although the moon shone clear and brilliant in its black depths, she would feel much safer if she had sunlight on her shoulders. And as the path became more and more recognisable, the part of the path where she had started off that morning and returned to every day after school, another worry sprouted in her mind.

The girl could smell something other than the sweet, mild smell of the dew-flecked fields. Something with a bitter edge; strong, but faint, yet every step drew her closer to the stench. She didn't want to approach it in fear of the danger it signalled, but it wasn't like she had any choice, was it?

She reached a low hill which the path meandered round. On days where the grass wasn't wet and the sun still hung high and bright above the horizon, she would have scampered up that hill and been welcomed with the sight of her humble cottage home right ahead of her. But that was not the case right now, and she stuck to following the trail. That awful smell only worsened as she came closer to her house, and she felt sweat seep into her collar from the nape of her neck.

She turned the corner, and her home came into full view.

She stopped.

What she could've sworn was her home just hours ago was now a burnt, skeletal shell built from scorched timbers and crumbling walls. Dark plumes curled off of the blanket of ash that had replaced the floor, and left a dirty, louring trail against the sky. A few orange tongues of fire licked and snapped at the blackened framework of the house, or danced between the debris that had once been the roof. But the blaze that had raged there was long gone, leaving behind a charred, glowering wreck.

For a while, the girl simply stared at the smouldering ruins. "Oka-san?" 

Her voice came out quiet, so quiet that even she could barely hear it. The word tasted sour on her tongue.

The putrid, hot reek of smoke clung to her skin, and crawled down her windpipe as she tried to breathe. She choked, gagging on its foul taste, and felt the acidy trickle of bile at the back of her throat. Yet in spite of the immense, terrifying sense of shock that had taken hold of her in that moment, and the fact that she was gasping for air, no tears came. And, still, as her shoulders hunched, folding in on herself, she could not tug her gaze away from her home, or what had used to be her home. This horrible sort of morbid curiosity kept her eyes glued, stretched wide open, fixed on the grim spectacle.

She screwed her eyes shut against the filthy vapours of the dying flames, wincing as stray embers were sent fluttering by the breeze and landed on her skin. She wanted to wake up. She wanted to open her eyes, and for everything to be normal again. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real.

But as her eyelids parted, and her house was still no more, she found she had no choice left. She fell to her knees, landing hard on the wet grass.

The girl howled at the sky, for a family that wouldn't come back and a home ravaged by fire.

And the wind howled back.