This week’s first line: In that moment, when flames licked the horizon and the sky burned with an orange glow, Taylor knew everything was going to be alright.

Beside him Emily slipped her hand inside his, grateful they were still together.

It had been a terrifying twenty-four hours and together they had worked to save their place as the firestorm descended on them.

Now the inferno was in the distance moving away and they each spared a thought for the people now in its path.

Around them the landscape was blackened, the only thing standing was their house. It had been a miracle that it had been saved.

The fire came at them running with a strong wind and Taylor and Emily had fought tooth and nail to prevent their home from being reduced to charred ashes.

Every spot fire they saw they raced to extinguish, it was exhausting work and they really didn’t think they had it in them, but they kept at it, dousing what they could until it became too much and their plan to hide from the heat and flames in the bunker Taylor had dug the week before was the only thing that saved them.

Inside they clung to each other as the fire raged overhead. Eventually the roar moved away and they waited another half hour before they ventured out to find their house still there, the cars and sheds all razed, the fences gone, the smoke and haze sitting on the ground as if a trophy of the calamitous event that had occurred.

Now they stood there two blacked and exhausted people surveying what they had left.

They held each other’s hand, their grip tightened as they imagined what might have happened.

In the distance they heard a truck coming down the road.

They were never so pleased to see a smiling face as the face of the fireman leaning out the fire truck’s door waving to them.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/first-line-friday-october-27th-2017/