Jenna's first memory of smoke is the grey curl rising from her father's pipe as they sat by the fire and he cradled her in his lap. She remembered feeling the smoke curl inside her nostrils, sneezing and her father laughing and putting away the pipe on the table. She kept looking at the curls of smoke that kept rising from that pipe on the table.
Her father told her a story that night. About bears and princesses and honey and truth and lies.
When she slept that night, she dreamed of a bear with eyes made of fire and claws made of ice. The bear set fire to the things it touched and it roared and roared and how it roared!
In the fury and the fire, Jenna woke up and she saw that the bear was real. And in its furious dance of fire, it was on fire itself. She cried in her bed as the flames engulfed her and the bear came for her. She saw wisps of smoke curling from the bear's yellow pelt and as the bear came closer. Somewhere in there, in the heat and confusion, Jenna lost her consciousness.
She woke up in her father's arms. His face was awash with tears and he kept repeating her name again and again.
A group of firemen were still dousing their house with water to quench the flames.
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I just want the older times back when I could write without editing.