FATED FIRE

FIRE!  His subconscious screamed it first!  FIRE!  Dreams of licking flames, unbearable heat, and airless smog quickly vanished as he became aware of the crackles of flames eating the timbers.  Remnants of the dream saturated his lungs as the lack of oxygen sent arrows of knowledge to his brain.

But the smell stabbed at his head, that unmistakable smell of burning wood, and stench of charred hair, his own.  It startled him completely awake.  FIRE! The word screamed through his body!  And his muscles jerked and his joints came to life, he just about met a worse fate as he half-leapt to exit the circle of flames.

Just as the spikes of fire flickered, he got a quick view of the north.  NOTHING!

Turning his eyes west, NOTHING!  Stumbling a bit more towards the south, NOTHING!  Nothing but blue skies and deep blue seas.   That sorry watery sound was slapping against the boards under his feet.  Then in a glimpse of hope his eyes spied land.  There!  Just to the east.  

And the flames went higher.

With obscured view, what was he to do when the tides were pulling and pushing, tugging and shoving, and sending him out to sea?

His mind wanted to visit and examine the preface to his predicament.  But his self-preservation shrieked for quick action.  Move!  Get out!

They'd put him here, The Others!

They'd thought him immoral.

He wasn't.

They'd declared him guilty.

He wasn't.

They'd pronounced him dead.

He wasn't.

He should've been a swimmer.

He wasn't.

The whole thing seemed a myth!  If only the sea gods, Neptune, Hydrus, Samudra, or Poseidon, could help him now, he wouldn't care which. 

But being a Christian, unlike The Others on shore, he bowed to his God.  Fervently and heatedly he prayed.  Then the answer came.  

"Click-click, click," and there smiling up out of his soon to be watery grave was a gun-metal blue-gray sea creature with a rounded friendly snout.  

A dolphin had come to help him out.

But wait.  There were two.  No, wait.  There were three!

The first offered up the end of a rope.

The second wore a life saver.

The third came in and out of focus, like a dying man's vision.

He laid back down on his pyre of fire and let his hands sag into the salted waters, into the hands of fate.