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Reya threw her body to the side just in time to avoid a flaming branch smashing down to the spot where she had stood only a second earlier. She kept on moving, she had to. Flames lapped at her paws and tail with every moment that she hesitated.

Despite her frenzy and the frantic beating of her heart, time seemed to slow down. Everything was burning. Flames shot up from the dry leaves and twigs that littered the forest floor. Bushes were engulfed in the inferno. She was surrounded; her only way forward was through the fire.

She leaped through a bush. Heat billowed against her face and spread across her whole body. She could feel her fur singing and catching fire, but she knew that there was no other way out. She had to make it to the river where she'd be safe.

Her throat stung from the dryness and the smoke. She coughed a harsh wheezing cough as she pushed through the bramble. The small otter's eyes stung and watered, but she couldn't let herself focus on that. She had to keep moving.

She could see nothing but leaves and fire for what felt like an eternity.

The river burst into Reya's view. She whispered a silent thank you to the god of the forest and steeled herself for the final dash. Every step she took felt like she was stepping into the red hot charcoal of her firepit, but she threw herself forward with bounding leaps. It was torture to keep moving, but each time she touched earth she rocketed herself back into the air with as much strength as she could muster.

The small otter hit the lake with a painful splash. The water was hot, and it was getting hotter fast. With a strong snap of her tail against the malleable water she shot forwards into the current. She swam forwards with all her strength.

Every push felt like she was shoving needles into body as the hot water agitated the burns all over her body. Her naked reddened paws and tail constantly fought against the searing pain of movement as she swam for her life.

However, the pain grew worse with every kick of her webbed paws and every movement of her rudder tail. She kept on going for what felt like an excruciatingly long time until finally she couldn't take it anymore. She dragged herself onto the shore.

Reya looked back, but the fire was gone. Smoke rose off in the distance, but it was far enough away for her to allow herself a short rest. She didn't know how she had managed to escape, or how long it would take for the inferno to catch up, but now that the adrenaline had worn off, every muscle in her body felt like it was being torn by some invisible claw.

She lay at the water's edge, painfully wheezing and coughing into the grass. Her back half was still immersed in the water - she didn't have the strength to move it. She needed to rest, but she wouldn't let herself fall asleep. She couldn't risk passing out as the fire caught up to her.

But when the fire came again, Reya couldn't do anything. She thrashed against the grass. She screamed in agony as her fur burned and her skin melted into her bones. All the otter could see were the red flames lapping at her body.

But when she woke back up nothing had changed.

Her body was halfway immersed in the river as she had left it. A wave of panic washed over her. How long had she passed out for? With the fur burned off of her paws and tail, the cold water was running along her bare skin. Had she already caught hypothermia?

Reya tried to focus her vision on the ground to clear her mind. Gither had taught her everything she needed to know about both burns and hypothermia. Anything he hadn't taught her she had learned from Talip, the doctor working in the nearby town of Haarshollow. She knew what she had to do, she just had to make herself remember.

Her paws burned with a sharp constant pain. She had lost most of the fur up to her ankles, and more in patches above them. They were horribly swollen with blotchy splats of red adorning the pads and skin. Worst of all, they hurt. She tried to focus. However, she couldn't force herself to think

She turned her head to look at the river. The tips of her mouth curved up in a contemptuous smile at a cruel joke of the gods. Cattails grew high and strong at this point along the river. Cattails whose stems Gither harvested to treat burns.

She spat a curse into the ground as the burning pain in her tail reclaimed her attention. The river helped somewhat, the burns on the front half of her body hurt worse - an almost incalculable difference to the suffering otter. She had to do something, but every time she tried to lift a paw her skin roared back in furious defiance.

Reya barely registered Torren make his way down past a bend in the river into her view. She watched through the cattails as he swam in her direction. His head popped out of the water several times to look around. He must have been searching for her. And then he stopped, his head pointed in her direction. She knew that she should have been overjoyed to see his familiar spotted brown fur moving towards her, but her mind felt numb.

He was swimming frantically now. She watched as he drew close; her body completely motionless except for her light blue eyes following his movement through the water.

"Torren..." She rasped the words through her dry throat, still filled with the taste of smoke.

He fumbled with his paws as he tried to talk to her. He did this when he got nervous. His signing was almost completely incomprehensible, it looked more like a crazy animal trying to juggle hot coals. Reya smiled weakly. She couldn't help but find him a little funny.

'You'll be Okay.' She made out.

'You'll be Okay.'

He signed it several times. His paws forced the words at her, as if force of will would make them true. Breathing heavily, he dropped back down to all fours.

'Should... Should I move you?' he asked, signing with a single paw.

Reya weakly shook her head no. She didn't want to move. With her raw painful skin any contact hurt. It almost felt good to stay completely still - at least compared to the sharp pain of trying to adjust herself.

'Ok- So, uh,' Torren seemed to be struggling with his own sign, something Reya rarely saw, 'I don't know! You're the one good with medicine! Is there something I can do? There has to be something I can do to help! Some poultice you know!"

He was freaking out. Reya smiled. It was rare for her to see her friend this frantic. She didn't fully comprehend why - she knew that she was hurt badly, but something within her refused to let her mind register just how bad her injuries were.

Her eyelids fluttered. She was tired. She just wanted to rest. She needed rest. "Sleep..." She muttered. She wanted to let Torren know that it was okay. She was just resting for a little bit and he didn't need to worry. Reya's vision blurred, but not before she saw tears at the corners of the spotted otter's eyes.

She didn't mind the warm body of the larger otter that curled around her. It should have hurt, but the pain seemed like an afterthought. It was something in the back of her mind fighting for attention and she decided to ignore it. She felt his head nestle into the crevice of her neck and the cold wet sting of tears dripping onto her tender skin.

If she had any dreams she didn't remember them.

When Reya woke up, Torren was still curled up next to her. Everything hurt worse than before, but she felt that she had her wits about her - much more than before. It was only now that she could really comprehend everything that had happened. Her home was gone. She had spent her entire life in that forest and now it was gone in an inferno of ash and fire.

There were bound to be countless injured rabbits, voles, and mice near her home and she was stuck by the river, useless and within an inch of her own life. It wasn't until then that she realized just how bad of a state she was in.

"Torren," she groaned.

He didn't move.

"Torren!" She shoved back at his body. For a second she only saw a searing white light as pain jolted through her nerves.

He barely stirred. Reya imagined that he would have been grunting and huffing if he could. The big oaf of an otter rarely woke up easily.

"Please," She rasped. Her voice was strained and raw. She felt him rustle a bit. Then he stiffened, as if all of the events of the past night had cascaded back into his head. He slowly pulled himself from her, trying not to disturb her painful burns. However, Reya could feel each strand of fur pulling away from her inflamed skin. Torren moved in front of her - he knew that Reya sure as hell wasn't going to turn around.

'You- you're ok...' His paws trembled as he signed to her. The expression on his face made Reya wonder if he had even believed that she would survive the night.

"Acorns," she mumbled in response.

He stared at her for a second like she had lost her mind. 'Acorns?'

"Yeah! For the love of Bleyen the lion, get me some dumb acorns!" She fell into a fit of coughing. What was he doing? He was just looking at her like she was some kind of lunatic. "They go on my skin stupid! I need to dress the burns!" She paused a second. "Sarsaparilla too! Get me Sarsaparilla! And those cattails over there, cut me a bunch of the heads."

She could practically see the wheels turning in his head. After a moment he scurried off and the little otter was left to her own thoughts. Unfortunately there weren't many thoughts to go to. The pain made her irritable, and she didn't want to be irritable, so she tried her best not to think.

She lay there, partially immersed in the river, trying to shut everything out of her mind. But she could hear too well. The sound of the river rushed through her ears. She heard every splash against the shore, every twist and every turn of the current. They beat like drums inside of her head. The trees whispered to her. The wind rustled the grass. A bird screeched from high above. Reya couldn't take it anymore.

She stood up on her front paws. It hurt enough to bring tears to her eyes, but moving seemed just as painful as being still and she relished an opportunity for a distraction. Reya had a plenty to do. She needed to make a salve for her burns and collect herbs for the pain.

She dragged herself fully onto the grass, slowly lifting her back haunches out of the river, and limped up to a pine tree. Scat! She needed to find a rock. She limped along the forest floor, silently muttering curse words that she would be aghast to hear her friends say as she scanned the ground. The searing pain made her less picky and she settled for a small rock with an edge that was less than sharp. She pulled herself back along the edge of the forest towards the pine tree she had first set out for. She groaned more at her stupidity at having to redo the painful trek than at the actual burns. And damn did they hurt. Her paws were very badly injured. After running over a forest floor covered with fresh embers she was lucky to still have all of her toes.

With a sharp crack she struck the rock against the tree, cutting through the outer layer of bark. She hit it two more times, panting in exhaustion between each strike, before dropping the rock to the ground.

Then she set to weaving. She pulled out small strands of grass and tied them together. She pushed them in and out of each other, expertly overlaying the strands and tying them off. Her paws hurt like nothing she had known before, but the stubborn small clawed otter refused to let it stop her.

Torren rushed back over to her, his face plastered with panic. He gingerly set the sarsaparilla, cattails, and acorns carefully clenched in his muzzle down on the flattest and cleanest stone that he could find. 'What now?' He signed.

"Now you boil the acorns and then mash them into a poultice with the sarsaparilla," Reya stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

'How am I supposed to boil it out here? There's nothing for a fire!' He gestured emphatically.

"There's flint and tinder back underground in the den... Also a pot! Its cast iron - should be perfectly fine - bring it over. Oh! Rags too! Hopefully they were stored far enough back that the fire didn't get to them. Maybe Aloe Vera, no, it'd be dried out and useless -" she was cut off by a sharp wheeze. Torren waited to see if she would finish, but quickly rushed off again when he realized that she was done talking.

In the meantime, Reya set back to work. She normally disliked weaving; she thought that it was boring and pointless. However, now she just wanted to keep herself busy. Even though every movement hurt, she didn't want to give in to her injuries. Her paws felt like they were still on fire when she tried to squeeze her fingers around the threads. She focused on her shaky movements as much as possible. She didn't want to think about the pain.

The otter's paws trembled as she guided the strands of grass into a loosely bound fabric. She ended up with what she normally would have considered a sorry excuse for a bowl-like container, but at this point she didn't care. Reya limped her way back to the tree, bowl at the ready.

She swore; the stone was still on the ground. She limped back as angrily as a little otter can limp and then carted the sharp stone back over to the tree. She started slowly cracking away the bark again. This time, she began to cut away at gooey patches of resin dried to the wood. She slowly collected it in her grass container until she had enough.

However, her interpretation 'enough' shrunk with the each swing. She eventually reached a compromise where her body decided to stop working and she decided that she could make do with the small amount that she had collected.

After collapsing and laying on the ground for what felt like an eternity, Reya pulled herself back to her feet and painfully walked back to the shore with her small container of sap. She popped a wad in her mouth, squeezing her face in disgust at the taste. It tasted like a vile mixture of dirt and rotten eggs. She didn't stop though, pine sap helped with pain and that was one thing that the briquette of an otter could use less of.

Torren stumbled back on two legs, carrying the heavy looking pot in his forepaws. It was filled to the brim with different herbs collected from the camp as well as flint and tinder that she had asked for. His mouth was full with even more plants from Gither's supplies.

'I got the stuff,' he struggled to sign without dropping the pot.

"I can see that," Reya giggled.

The pot hit the ground with a thunk, despite the spotted otter's best efforts to set it down carefully. He laid the contents out on the ground, keeping the acorns, sarsaparilla and flint and steel as Reya had requested.

"Set up a fire over there," she gestured a little bit away from her, "put the acorns in and fill the water just up to the top of them. Don't add the sarsaparilla. Oh! And thanks for getting all that stuff; a lot of these herbs are pretty rare around here."

He nodded in acknowledgement and began to work on the fire while she rummaged through the herbs that he had collected. She immediately noticed the mint nettle. She made a note of it - the smoke had done a number to her lungs and nettle tea would help. She couldn't easily tell, but she suspected that Torren was also having trouble breathing. There was also yarrow for bleeding and sores, rat root for headaches and exhaustion, and, much to her excitement, Alder bark. She immediately tore a small piece of it off to chew on. Reya had completely forgotten that Gither kept it around. It soothed burns and sores, making it excellent to use to flesh out the poultice. She poured the sap from her makeshift container onto a flat rock and then spat the chewed bark inside.

"Torren, when you get that fire going - try not to burn down this half of the forest too, by the way - get over here, I need your help chewing this stuff," she spoke as loudly as she could. Her lungs were still throwing a fit. She wanted to start brewing the nettle tea as soon as the acorns were boiled.

Torren brought over the mushy acorns, soaking in a light brownish juice inside the pot.

'What now?'

"Let it cool for a second, you don't want your paws looking like these," Reya playfully wagged a paw at him; it was naked of any fur and burned with nasty looking welts. Torren turned his eyes away causing Reya to laugh.

"You know, I can probably do it," she spoke through a mouthful of alder bark.

Reya spat out the bark into the grass bowl. Her jaw was getting sore, but she had already collected a lot of the malleable material in her container. "Scoop all of that stuff in there," she gestured to the bowl, "and then grind up the sarsaparilla and add that in too." She cautiously tested the mixture with her paw. It had already cooled down enough that the heat wasn't a problem. She began to mash the poultice together with her paws, it already felt soothing on her skin. Torren slowly added in the other two ingredients as the mixture transformed into a soft paste.

"Looks good!" She exclaimed, "feels pretty good too... Can you help getting it on? I don't think I can do any stretching right now."

The male nodded and scooped out a pawful of the poultice, his face quenching slightly.

"What? Can't take a bit of otter spit on your paws?" Reya teased.

Torren tried to respond, but Reya couldn't understand him through the mush coating his paws.

"Don't let it all drip off, I need it! Gods above it hurts!" Reya urged, tears welling up in her eyes. She startled herself. This was the first time she had even hinted to Torren how much pain she was in. She had never expected herself to deal with it so well - she used to have fits over getting a thorn stuck in her paw. And now she was only hours after a close encounter with death and she barely even mentioned her pain. It did hurt. It hurt like nothing she'd ever felt before. It was like every single nerve on her body was fighting against her. Her skin was in mutiny and trying to tear itself away off of her body.

Torren looked stressed. He was constantly looking back at her with worry. His paws shook as he applied the mixture to her skin where the fur had burned off. Yet aside from some involuntary squeaks as he poked and prodded at her injuries, she tried her best to remain composed for him.

After dressing her wounds, Torren made a brew of nettle tea at Reya's suggestion. They slept in the same spot that night. She wasn't too worried about sleeping in the open. She didn't know any dangers on her side of the river, despite the freak lynx attack from the previous autumn. No signs of the beast had been seen since then, and even if it had by some unfortunate coincidence come down recently, Reya assumed that the forest fire would drive it off.

The next day, she woke to some delicate nudges from the spotted otter's cold wet nose.

"What gives?" She groaned

'It's almost midday,' he nodded at the sun, high in the sky.

"I need to get better, you've gotta let me rest." Torren nodded begrudgingly.

That night, she woke Torren up with a sharp jab to his abdomen.

"You need to redo my dressings."

He groaned and went to collect more acorns. Much to Reya's delight, he returned a fat healthy looking salmon alongside the ingredients for her poultice. She gulped down the fish eagerly. She hadn't eaten since before the fire.

The next morning, Reya was up and moving. The constant searing pain had died down to a dull throb, but contact with her burns hurt even more than it had before. However, she was sick and tired of the riverbed they were on and had made up her mind to leave.

"C'mon we're moving."

'Is that a good idea? Don't you need to rest?' Torren cautiously suggested.

"Who's the healer here? I'm perfectly fine," she hissed through clenched teeth, "Let's go." Torren didn't quite believe her, but he didn't quite think he'd be able to stop her.

'Where are we going?'

"Haarshollow. It's about two hours south of my den."

'what?' Torren signed emphatically, 'You said that place was days away! why didn't you tell me earlier?'

"Well," Reya sighed, "after Gither left I guess I just didn't want to be alone. I thought that you'd leave me here if I said it was so close."

Torren darted to Reya's side as she stumbled over her own paws, yelping in pain.