"Zin! ZINNIE! Where are you?!"

I heard a very familiar voice calling my name and yet there was nothing I could do to recall a face or name to match the voice, let alone respond to it. I tried. Mirla knows I tried, but I couldn't even open my eyes more than slightly. All of my senses were slowly failing me, but they weren't completely off.

I could still smell the faint, but pungent aroma of ash and smoke from, what I could only assume, was a fire. Yes, I know, quite the astute observation. Believe it or not, that was not how I realized I was in the middle of a forest fire. It wasn't until I could see the hazy outlines of the trees that surrounded me that I realized I'd die in the heat of a flame. Each tree that I laid my eyes on was covered with the beautiful yellow-orange curvature of life-threatening flames. And, as if my senses could only reveal to me how unfortunate my situation was, I could feel the slowly forming puddle of what I could only identify as a sticky red substance beneath me. Now I realize it was my own blood, but at the time, it simply wouldn't register as such. I couldn't think much about anything. My thoughts were as hazy as my vision and neither was truly reliable at the time.

"Zinnia, please answer me!"

There it was again, that voice. The letter "C" came to mind, but that was all. I tired to think of every name I knew that started with "C", but I couldn't even think of a word that contained the letter. I could barely think of anything except what little my senses could actually detect. I could truly only think in circles.

Smoke. Fire. Red puddle. C.

That was it. That was all I could think of, but lacking the ability to think didn't mean my personality had changed. So, despite my circumstances and despite everything saying I should lay there and accept my death, I attempted to stand. It didn't go very well. Once I moved, it was as if my entire body ached and I could sense nothing but pain. And so another thought was added to my thought circle.

Smoke. Fire. Red puddle. C. Pain.

I tried to remember something, anything at all outside of my five word thought circle and my name. I tried to remember how I ended up in pain in a red puddle in a forest on fire, but I couldn't remember a thing. Or maybe it was that I couldn't focus. Maybe the pain was too much; too much to focus on figuring out what events led me to this moment. I could barely think up questions to ask myself to get me to the point of remembering.

My head. My head was pounding too. There wasn't just pain in my muscles, through my stomach, and in my arms and legs. There was also pain in my head. I had no clue where it came from, where any of the pain came from, but the more I realized that I was in pain, the more difficult it was to stay conscious.

Slowly, I gave up. Slowly, I let my eyes shut. Slowly, I lost contact with the world around me.

I couldn't think of much, but I did realize that I was going to die. I was laying on the ground in a burning forest and I couldn't move. That, I realized, meant death.

"Zinnia."

Relief. I could detect relief in her voice. And I could detect that it was a girl. That familiar voice was that of a girl. I opened my eyes as much as I could with the strength I had left and saw her.

Cynthia? I tried to say her name, but I couldn't even keep my eyes open. Everything around me very quickly became eclipsed with a black fog.