Written by Firelight

A Rude Awakening

An orange glow escaped from under the curtain over the window and slunk menacingly towards Caroline, who was just beginning to stir in her bed. It curled around her toes and up the length of her body until she opened her eyes. For a moment everything was fine. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the new light brought by the slowly rising sun, but something was off. Caroline had seen many sunrises, they were her favorite time of day, but the lighting for this one seemed wrong. There was too much orange, too much darkness, too much...

Fire. For several seconds that was the only thing that Caroline could think when she pulled back the curtain to reveal the entire city ablaze just outside her window. Her mind felt heavy, like a thick smoke was running through her brain making it impossible to think clearly. Through the fog she saw herself wrap a dressing robe around her frame, and felt the cold wood on her bare feet as she ran out her door and down the hall.

Her first instinct was to go to her parents room and wake them. A small part of her was still holding out hope that when she got there she would find that this was nothing more than a bad dream, and her parents would carry her back to bed the way they had done so many times when she was younger. Then, just as she was turning towards their door, she heard voices in the sitting room. Caroline poked her head out of the hallway to listen.

She heard the soft whisper of Charlotte, and the grumble of two unfamiliar male voices. She crept closer trying to make out what they were saying, and she almost could have when Charlotte spotted her. She ran to Caroline and wrapped an arm around her, ushering her into the room with the men.

"This is the daughter?" One of the men asked

Caroline pulled her robe tighter around her body and cursed her earlier decision to forgo shoes.

"What's going on? Are my parents here?" The sudden awakening had left Caroline's voice hoarse.

"We are evacuating this neighborhood." The man's tone did not change, "You two will be brought to the train station and anyone else who lives in this area will be redirected there as well."

Caroline wanted to push the issue further. Find out exactly where her parents were and what was going on, but she didn't. She couldn't. It was all she could do to ignore the glow behind her curtains as she pulled on the easiest dress she could find, and tossed a few of her most important belongings into a duffel bag. She only spent a few moments fighting with the lace on her dress before she gave up completely. Hopefully with a coat over it no one would notice.

The trip to the train station was somehow both far longer and far shorter than Caroline felt it should have been. As they boarded the carriage, she kept her gaze fixed on the ground in front of her, stubbornly refusing to allow her eyes to be pulled towards the venomous glow of the city. She and Charlotte sat in silence the whole ride. What could you talk about when you were fleeing your home at midnight as a fire enveloped the city you'd grown up in? A few times Caroline almost tried; she considered asking about her parents, if only to receive some sort of reassurance that they would be meeting them at the station, but a part of her feared that it wouldn't come and so she stayed quiet.

Traveling at night was an experience all its own. Somehow the lack of light magnified every sound, and emphasized every bump. The horses feet pounded like hail on the gravel outside, and the carriage seemed just moments from tipping over. It didn't matter that Caroline had ridden this route countless times for every holiday and family gathering in her life, she had never ridden it like this. She pulled a thin scarf from her bag, placed it between her head and the wall, and willed this night to disappear.

The next thing she saw when she dared to peek out of the small compartment window was the train station. Hundreds of carriages were lined up along the street, and there must have been at least twice that many people milling about as well. Inside the main terminal, she could barely move. Everywhere she looked there were children sleeping on benches, mothers nursing screaming infants behind old newspapers, and men lighting bookstand cigarettes from a singular lighter that no one could remember who had brought.