The fire was raging up the attic walls. Lilly, by feel, found the cedar box. Her mother’s letters. The only things she cared to save. Though yellowed and brittle, she remembered: “Even in the dark, you were always my light.”

She hadn’t cried in seventeen years.

Smoke thickened. Flames exploded. A beam cracked.  

Lilly cradled the box and ran, coughing, sobbing, laughing. She didn’t stop until she hit the grass.

The house crashed. Ash and sky remained.

In the thick smoke, she swore she saw wings.

She was finally free.

And maybe… finally home.