There was no way that the inn could be saved. Tomas was sure of it, after seeing it from the outside. Smoke billowed from the roof as the fire ate at it, the dark haze obscuring the stars that had been so bright earlier that night.

The lower level was mostly safe, though. The majority of the fire blazed in the upper portions of the building, leaving the bottom relatively untouched. Tomas doubted that would last long, though. The floor was sure to burn through soon, and then the falling beams would set alight the bottom floor, leaving the inn as nothing more than a pile of burnt rubble.

Tomas had worried on his way down the stairs if they would crumble under his weight, weakened as they must have been already from the fire, but he had reached the floor without incident. His luck that night was unbelievable. The fates were looking out for him, he thought. Had they not been, surely he would not have awoken in time, and would have slept up to the point that the roof collapsed on top of him, burying him in a pile of blazing timber.

But his luck had held out, and he had woken, and made it out of the inn safely. He could only hope that the fates were as interested in Dove as they were in him. His discovery that she hadn’t even been in her room at the time that the fire had started worried him. Perhaps it should instead give him hope, since clearly she hadn’t been harmed by the blaze, but it didn’t. Instead, he could only think of why she hadn’t been in her room. Where else could she have been?

He had made it outside of the inn with relatively no difficulty aside from the burning in his lungs. Even now, it felt as if a spark of the flame had slithered down his throat and lodged itself in his lungs. Each breath he took burned against his throat, almost as if he were inhaling the fire itself, despite his distance from it. He coughed, the air abrasive against his throat.

There was a large crowd milling about outside of the inn, many of them the inn’s previous occupants, having been chased out by the fire just as he had. He heard coughing from many of them, while some of them merely stared at the inn in horror.

It was fortunate indeed that the inn was a decent distance from the surrounding buildings, he thought. Otherwise, the rest of the town might have caught fire as well. As it was, if the fire was not soon quenched, there was the potential that it might spread anyway. The flames reached higher with each minute, it seemed, and the larger it grew, the more dangerous it became to the other buildings.

As Tomas made his way through the crowd, though, he couldn’t find Dove. No matter which way he turned, it was dark heads everywhere. No one seemed to have a hood on, and no faces were pale enough to belong to her. The longer he searched, the more panicked he became.

Where was she? The innkeeper had insisted she must be outside with the others, but she was nowhere to be seen. Why wasn’t she here?

And again, why had she not been in her room? Maybe she’d gone for a walk, he thought. If she’d gone for a walk, she might not even know what had happened to the inn. The thought calmed him momentarily.

But then he realized that even if she had gone for a walk, he had no clue where she might be. He couldn’t wait for her to show up, in case he was wrong, and she hadn’t gone for a simple stroll about town. It was a dangerous thing for her to do in the first place, he thought. Going for a walk at night, alone, was never a safe idea. Who knew what could happen?

And who knew what might have happened? If she had gone for a walk, after all, anything could have happened to her. Not everyone was as kindhearted as Tomas himself. Many might have ulterior motives if they discovered a pale-haired girl with such a fine boned look about her. Not everyone would be deceived by her cloths and not immediately think her of some worth.

Tomas had to shake the thought away. She was fine. He couldn’t think anything else. She escaped the fire before it had even happened. Of course she was fine.

He continued to search the crowd in hopes that he would soon spot a hooded figure, pale face shining from under the brim. She had to be here somewhere. No matter where she had gone on her supposed walk, the fire had grown so large that surely she must have seen it and come to investigate. No one could see such a fire and ignore it. Already it had attracted a huge crowd, many of them bringing with them buckets of water in an attempt to help put it out before it managed to spread.

But as the crowd continued to grow, his hopes continued to shrink. How long had he been looking? He didn’t even know. Time seemed to almost not exist, really. Everything stayed in such a constant state, it was hard to picture that time was even real anymore. The fire continued to burn, the crowd continued to both help and watch, and he continued to search. Nothing changed, not even the constant haze of smoke. Time seemed to have nearly stopped.

But eventually, he had to give up. He had been through the crowd countless times, and despite his obsession with finding his charge, it seemed it entirely hopeless. She was nowhere to be found.

He’d lost count of the number of times he had seen someone in a hood and hurried to their side, only to find it was someone he had never seen before in his life. Whether they were too tall or too fat, or had too broad of shoulders, he never noticed until he reached them. He was sure he had approached many of them more than once. He must look like a madman to them.

But who was to say he wasn’t? Even he had to admit he looked half crazed, with his cloak askew and his bag slung precariously over his shoulder. His hair was surely a disheveled mess, and his face was far from cleanshaven. His stubble contrasted to many of the cleanshaven faces he had thus far seen in his mad search. He hardly thought to shave often, but it seemed that the men in town did. It only served to make him seem more crazed.

Having ceased his search, he found himself in the middle of the crowd, staring at the fire with a blank expression. He blinked, dismissing the trancelike state he’d fallen into. Shaking his head, he ran a hand down his stubbled face. The lack of sleep must be causing him to go insane. He didn’t blame anyone who did think him a madman.

He needed sleep, he decided. Wherever Dove was, he hadn’t a clue, and he currently felt like a dead man walking. Even if he did find her, he couldn’t do anything to help her in the state he was in. Sleep. It sounded good.

He rubbed at his eyes. They felt dry, as if the heat of the fire had dried them out. He felt as if the fire had invaded every portion of his body, trying to convert him. Fire burned down his throat, and fire burned in his eyes. He felt as if he could breathe fire if he truly put his mind to it. His lungs felt as if they were full of it. He felt like a dragon, a being of fire.

At least he was further away from the fire and the smoke. How long he had been in the building while the fire raged, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even fully sure what it was that had woken him. The heat, perhaps. He didn’t know. Or at least, he couldn’t remember. Maybe something else had woken him, and he’d forgotten what it was.

He massaged his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. His headache wasn’t helping matters. Perhaps the fire had invaded there as well, charring his mind. A stupid notion, he thought after a moment. It was only his sleep deprived state that was causing the delusion. As dangerous as fire was, it couldn’t invade someone’s body in such a way. It was impossible, even he knew that.

But whether the fire had invaded his body or not, his exposure to the smoke was clearly causing problems. He must have been breathing the smoke longer than he’d thought. While the burning in his throat had died down some, it still hurt to swallow, as well as to breath. As if his lungs were afraid each new breath would bring with it more smoke, and were protesting the notion.

He didn’t know how long had passed by the time he looked back at the inn, escaping his thoughts for a short while. He felt deluded, walking through a surreal reality while he was inside his own mind. He wanted things to feel real again.

The fire had died down some, the raging inferno having been somewhat tempered by the water thrown on it by the townspeople. Perhaps the inn could still be saved, after all.

Needing a distraction from himself, he immediately began to search for some way to help put out the fire. It was always his first instinct when he was upset; he searched for ways to help others. It was how he coped. How he’d always coped.

Where were they getting the buckets? he thought, blocking out anything else. If he could get a bucket, and some water, then he could help. It may not do a lot, but it would do something. And something was always better than nothing.

He began moving again, walking in the direction of a few men with buckets. They were rushing towards the fire, water droplets splashing over the side of their buckets and splashing in the dust of the ground. His eyes followed the path they had come from, and he set off to find a bucket.

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A/N Bit of a filler chapter, I'm afraid. Anyway, I've got to run, so I'll keep this short. Just let me know what you think and all. Comment, vote, whatever. Loves! xx