TWO FIRES RAGED across town from each other, flames spearing up into the night.<\/p>\n
In the River Market at the north end of the city, fire chewed out a confectionery-bookstore-patisserie and the offices and residences above them. The brick held while firefighters went about their work, and residents, owners, and spectators gathered as near as they could to watch. One woman sat alone on a curb away from the rest, a laptop and purse on the ground beside her, watching as her life went up in smoke.<\/p>\n
She was<\/em> grateful to be alive, even so, and she wondered when her business partners would arrive. She felt no fear, though she trembled in impotent rage. A man walked toward her, but she didn\u2019t look at him, even when he turned and dropped onto the curb beside her.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you okay?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n Pause. \u201cThat\u2019s \u2026 unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed.<\/p>\n She took a deep breath to calm herself. When she felt she could speak again, she did, her voice hard. \u201cThat bastard tried to kill me and he\u2019s taken away everything I own.\u201d<\/p>\n He shook his head and clucked his tongue. \u201cWhen you lie down with dogs \u2026 Obviously he didn\u2019t get the memo.\u201d<\/p>\n He was right. She began to cry, because she had nowhere for all that anger to go right then, and he folded her in his arms.<\/p>\n At the south end of the city in Mission Hills, a man carrying three children struggled through the front hallway of a house to get to the door. A small child was tucked under each arm and he shouted encouragement to the third, who clung to his neck. They screamed in pain as flames spread over all four of them. He stumbled through the gaping hole of the front entrance, fire licking up his pant legs. Firefighters ran to him and tossed wet blankets over all of them, bundling them and then dousing them before racing them to the awaiting ambulances.<\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter,\u201d the man gasped as he was loaded onto a gurney. \u201cShe fell\u2014 My daughter!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSir, is there anyone else in the house?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy wife,\u201d he coughed, just before he passed out.<\/p>\n ★<\/p>\n TWO FIRES RAGED across town from each other, flames spearing up into the night. In the River Market at the north end of the city, fire chewed out a confectionery-bookstore-patisserie and the offices and residences above them. The brick held while firefighters went about their work, and residents, owners, and spectators gathered as near as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":39,"menu_order":4120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-259","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23481,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/259\/revisions\/23481"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}