The Guardian

The sky is falling

When I woke up, I expected to be surrounded by fire, but strangely, I wasn't. As a matter of fact, the fires were all completely gone from the village, but not completely gone. As I looked up, I noticed the roots covering the ceiling were slowly burning, letting in beams of light over the broken old village.

"He's awake!"
A voice called. I was in an infirmary bed out in the open, surrounded by other infirmary beds under a large tent roof. Their were rows of different tents, all filled with the Jinjaga and the Klumpfs.

My legs were bandaged and soaked in cool sapcid. It felt soothing on my burns and almost made me forget about the fact that I was a half cooked steak. I slowly sat up, but a hand shot to my chest, pushing me back down. They were the old wrinkly strong hands of the Jinjaga king.

He smiled upon looking down at me, the green jewls and beads in his hair gleaming in the green lantern light.
"Rest."

He could have stopped my heart or knocked me out right there, so I did as he asked and kept my head down on the pillow behind my neck.

People started running from all sides to see me. Healthy Klumpfs and Jinjaga villagers were all cheering and yelling for me. But why? What had I done? Sure, I ran into battle headfirst. But I got my butt kicked and got saved by the true heroes. I opened my mouth to correct the cheers, but a hand landed on my shoulder, stopping me from saying anything.

To the right of me, with their large hand, bigger than my head on my shoulder, was Iro. On his shoulder was a familiar rat buddy. Rosslyn looked so happy, I thought she might explode, but she tried not to show it, pretty ineffectively.
"Well, well, well. The twerp survived after all."

Before I could even roll my eyes, she leaped to my shoulder and hugged my cheek.
"We all thought you were done for. You were pretty out of it."

I couldn't bear to think about how she would feel if I actually didn't make it. We only knew each other for two days, but we had spent just about every second together. I wasn't afraid to call her a friend, and the feeling was definitely mutual.

Finally, I got my first real hug. Mamble practically crushed my spine into fine dust, so I think it was safe to say he was worried for me.
"If you ever do some stupid, brave, dumb, heroic, completely and totally idiotic stuff like that again, I'll cook you and serve you to Rosslyn."

Before he actually did break my spine, Amphia pulled him off.
"He's still healing. You two can have your canoodle fest later."

Seeing Amphia alive and well was good, but what was better was seeing Bo alright. She was covered in burns and bandages and had to walk in crutches with an arm cast, but she was alive, and that was better than nothing.

Finally, the dragon man himself appeared at the front of my bed. Everyone in the crowd seemed more than happy that he was here as well, especially after dealing with the flying Jape situation.
"Harlen! If what you've done hasn't earned you a spot in the history books, I don't know what will."

My face forced me to smile, but I didn't mind. I was surrounded by good people that I could never forget about. It reminded me of when I was in Lo-Lo, surrounded by people, happy to see me doin' alright. Hopefully, this wouldn't be a reoccurring thing. It was nice, but I can only take it so many times.

Amphia coughed loudly to get everyone's attention with noise since she wasn't a very tall person.
"Everyone! I have an announcement... Lady Nature has agreed to take our heroes downstream through the raging fires!"

Everyone, including Mamble and Rosslyn, cheered now that we finally had a way to move forward through the wildfire. Hopefully, we'll be able to stop the fires before they spread to the villages. The heavy smoke still loomed like a nasty fog, making the environment much more eerie, but all the burning that could have been done to this village had already happened.