lipsthatshame:

She could feel the heat surrounding her body. It radiated on and off of her skin with the shifting of the wind. Every stock thrashed about in a flurry of light. Unable to focus or understand anything that was happening, her head began to feel heavy. Like a limp doll her body dropped to the ground. She could barely breathe.

Flora?

Fauna?

…Merryweather?

What was happening to her? The last thing she remembered was tucking herself into bed with a book. It was called, “The Mask of Courage”.

One morning, Little Panda decided to take a long walk through a bamboo forest. He ate a leaf here and he ate a leaf there. Eventually, he discovered Little Koala sitting high in the bamboo. With a polite nod, they greeted each other. The two seemed so alike, although they were completely different species. They enjoyed the same meals. They both liked to look at the stars. They found napping to be a pleasant hobby. After a few days of becoming close friends, Little Panda removed his mask. He was a koala as well! It was no wonder why they had so much in common. When asked, “Why?” Little Panda simply replied. “I wanted to see if you would still love me if I changed.”

She must have fallen asleep near the end of the story, because she began to have terrible nightmares. Like always, they involved dragon’s fire. But this was the very first time she awoke to find her nightmare became a reality. Although in the distance, someone called to her, she could not hear a thing. All she could hear was the crackling of fire and the splintering of bamboo.

“Help…!” Rose struggled to shout as she coughed into the dirt.

When the woman failed to respond to Ping, the recruit was more alarmed than ever.  Was she hurt?  Unconscious?  Had the smoke thickened the air so that it was impossible to hear, let alone see or breathe?  Ping pinched his sleeve over his nose, because even the air scorched his insides and turned his stomach.  Struggling to place his feet on the cluttered forest floor, he crouched forward to avoid flaming, broken branches and charged towards the figure on the ground, trailing dust and cinders as he went.

“Xiǎo jie,” he gasped, remembering the proprieties his mother had trained him in even as he dropped to his knees next to the young woman.  Ping hesitated, then gently shook her shoulder in a way that showed how reluctant he was to yank her into a sitting position if she was capable of doing it herself.  "Are you all right?  I’ll help you out of here!“

At least, Ping hoped he would be able to.  The longer the fire raged on, the more dangerous it might become to move in any direction.  For all he knew, the others would do their best to put out the fire; for all he knew again, though, they were as lost as he, perhaps not as lucky to have evaded injury.  Without knowing whether the other recruits were near, Ping felt very alone.

This, then, must be what war was like.  Ping bit his lip and peered worriedly at the woman on the ground.