ESCAPE! Fire and Flames (English Version)

Chapter 6: The truth?

You wipe away the tears and slowly open your eyes as you try to orientate yourself on the stretcher on which you are now lying. You don't remember exactly how you got here. Between a veil of tears, all you can remember is a few big, strong hands. You had already considered whether you should defend yourself, but between all your feelings of guilt you could not find the strength to do so.
"Nele!", suddenly you hear a voice that is all too familiar to you. "Mummy?", you ask half astonished, half relieved. And there you see her, completely dissolved, she comes towards your couch and spreads her arms to hold you in it. "Mummy!", you call out, this time louder and full of anticipation.
But when your mother has finally taken you in her arms, tears come again. "It's my fault, Mummy," you sob desperately. "The book, it was like witchcraft," you stammer on. But then your mother interrupts you: "But darling, what are you talking about? What book?"
"It... it had magical powers... everything I read happened.", while you're still talking, you hear how silly it sounds. "I didn't mean for the mall to be destroyed," you bring up before your voice goes dead.
A man in a white coat suddenly appears next to your mother and tells her something about a shock and weird stuff. "But it is the truth!" you protest.
Then your mother turns to you again and explains in a soft, calm voice: "No book has destroyed the mall, honey. It was an excavator. Do you remember the construction site in front of the shopping centre? They dug up a gas pipe, a spark caused the gas to explode. I'm so glad you're okay!"
All of a sudden you feel really small and stupid. Of course you knew from the beginning that there had to be a logical explanation for all this. "But what about the tongue-in-cheek flame that killed the firefighters who tried to rescue me," you ask, actually just so that they would give you the logical explanation for that too.
"The firefighters were not killed", the man in the smock reassures you. "They are not yet quite sure what caused the flash fire, but suspect that some oil or water pipe in the shopping centre has burnt through."
You nod slowly and look at your mother. "It wasn't the book," you realize. "No," she says with a smile. "The book is innocent." You breathe a sigh of relief. It's like a great weight has been lifted from your heart. Only now do you realise how overwhelming your feelings of guilt had been. "Acquitted on all counts," you joke, referring more to yourself than to the book.
Your mother beams at you. When you look at her like this, she seems as relieved as you do. "We're going to take you to hospital for a while now, until we're sure you've recovered from your shock," the doctor announces and turns to your mother: "You can accompany her, of course.
He hasn't finished saying the sentence, your stretcher is already rolling. You pass the place of the tragic accident with ease. Lost in thought, you look back at the rubble.
And just before you reach the ambulance, you see him. Like a piece of jewellery, drawn with fine, black lines, it adorns the side door of an excavator that was involved in the disaster: The dragon!

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)