“Elena, think,” she whispered to herself, though her voice shook. She grabbed a damp towel from the sink, pressed it to her face, and ran.
The Cruz house was small, the kind built in layers over years—one room added when money allowed, another when hope was stronger than sense. The hallway was barely wide enough for two people to pass, its walls lined with framed photographs: her parents on their wedding day in Tarlac, her younger brother Jun laughing in his graduation barong, her own reflection smiling back from years ago, when everything still felt possible.
Smoke swallowed those memories whole.
Elena dropped to her knees, crawling as the air thickened. Her lungs burned. The heat was no longer a warning but a threat, pressing down on her back, driving her forward. Somewhere, glass shattered. Somewhere else, something fell with a heavy, final thud.
“Ares! Luna!”
She reached the bedroom door just as flames licked the frame. Inside, the dogs were pressed against the far wall, eyes wide and shining. Ares, the older one, tried to run toward her and skidded back, confused by the fire. Luna trembled, her body low to the floor, her tail tucked tight.
Elena didn’t think. She scooped Luna into her arms, ignoring the pain as her skin screamed, and grabbed Ares by the collar. The heat seared her palms. Her towel fell away, useless.
The hallway was worse now. Fire roared like a living thing, hungry and fast. She turned back, shielding Luna with her body, pulling Ares behind her.
And then the ceiling collapsed.
The world became noise and darkness. Something struck Elena’s shoulder, driving her to the floor. She felt Ares wrench free, heard his yelp cut short. For a moment—just one—panic swallowed everything. She clawed at the floor, coughing, blind.
“Elena!”
The voice came from outside, muffled, distant. Another voice joined it. Then another. The neighbors.
She tried to scream but only smoke came out.
Ares appeared through the haze, teeth clamped onto her sleeve, pulling with a strength she had never felt before. He dragged her, inch by inch, toward a rectangle of light that wavered at the end of the hall. Luna whimpered in her arms, her small body shaking, but alive.
Hands reached for them.
Someone grabbed Luna. Someone else hooked their arms under Elena’s shoulders and hauled her forward. The gate scraped against concrete as it was thrown open. Fresh air hit her like a slap.
Elena collapsed onto the street, coughing until her chest felt torn open. The world spun—blue sky, faces smeared into one another, the orange reflection of fire dancing in terrified eyes.
She rolled onto her side, searching.
Ares lay beside her, sides heaving, soot streaking his once-golden fur. Luna was curled against his chest, her tiny body rising and falling. When Elena reached out, her fingers brushing their warm, living bodies, a sob tore free.
They were alive.
The fire engines arrived late, sirens screaming down Magsaysay Street, water hissing against flame. By then, the house was already lost. The roof caved in with a sound like a final sigh, sending sparks into the air.
Elena watched from the curb, wrapped in a neighbor’s towel, her skin stinging, her hands blistered. Someone pressed a plastic bottle of water into her shaking fingers. Another woman crossed herself, whispering a prayer in Tagalog.
“Salamat sa Diyos,” someone said. Thank God.
Elena nodded, though tears blurred everything. She thought of the photographs on the wall, the old letters in the drawer, the smell of her mother’s cooking that seemed to live forever in the kitchen tiles. Gone. All of it gone.
But when Ares lifted his head and licked her wrist with a weak, determined swipe, something inside her steadied.
That night, she slept on a neighbor’s sofa, the dogs curled tight against her, their bodies warm and solid. Every time she drifted off, the sound of fire chased her back awake. She would reach out, fingers tangling in fur, and breathe again.
The next days passed in a blur of ash and paperwork. Barangay officials came and went. Volunteers brought rice, canned goods, clothes that smelled like other homes. The smell of smoke clung to everything, a reminder that refused to fade.
It was during one of those afternoons, as Elena sat on the curb staring at the blackened remains of her house, that the old man approached.
He walked with a limp, his sandals worn thin, his face lined like dried earth. He stopped a few steps away, leaning on his cane, and studied the ruins.
“You were inside,” he said, not a question.
Elena nodded.
“And the dogs?”
She glanced at Ares and Luna, asleep in the shade. “They saved me.”
The old man smiled, a small, knowing curve of his lips. “No,” he said softly. “You saved each other.”
She frowned, unsure what he meant, but he was already turning away, disappearing into the heat and noise of the street.
That night, Elena dreamed of her mother.
She stood in the old kitchen, the one from before the renovations, stirring a pot of sinigang. The air smelled of tamarind and tomatoes. Outside, rain fell hard against the roof.
“You did well,” her mother said without turning.
Elena woke with tears on her cheeks and a strange calm in her chest.
Weeks passed. The story spread—about the fire, about the woman and her dogs. A local paper ran a short piece. Someone shared it online. Messages came from strangers offering help, praising bravery, calling her a hero.
Elena didn’t feel like one.
She felt like someone who had almost lost everything.
With donations and borrowed money, she found a small apartment nearby. It wasn’t much—just one room, a window that looked onto a busy road—but it was safe. On the day she moved in, she placed a single photograph on the shelf: her family, smiling, framed by a beach in Batangas years ago.
That night, as she lay on the floor mattress with Ares and Luna pressed against her sides, a sound reached her ears.
A crack.
Her heart leaped into her throat. She sat up, breath shallow, scanning the room. The dogs stirred, alert.
Then she laughed, a shaky, disbelieving sound. It was just fireworks—someone celebrating a birthday, the pops echoing between buildings.
She lay back down, placing a hand on each dog, and let the tension drain away.
In the quiet that followed, Elena understood the twist her life had taken. The fire had taken her house, her things, her past as she knew it. But it had also burned away something else—her belief that she was alone.
She was not.
As sleep finally claimed her, Luna sighed softly, Ares’s tail thumped once against the floor, and outside, the city of Quezon hummed on, alive and stubborn and full of second chances.