“Put the fire out, Sadie,” I said through my chattering teeth. Sadie looked over at me, prodding stick in hand, the end red-hot after just being raked through the charcoal at the bottom of the flames. I wrapped my blanket around me tighter as I shivered, standing as far away from the fire as I could such that I could still faintly hear the crackling through the dead silence of the night. 

“I’ll put it out once the sun comes back up.”  

“You know how I feel about—” 

“Deal with it, Reece,” she interrupted, sighing irritably and stoking the flames a little more, reaching over and grabbing a small log from her pile and tossing it on top, the charred wood crunching loudly beneath it as they crumbled under the weight. “I can’t stand the cold anymore. Last two days, I didn’t mind too much, but it’s fucking freezing tonight. Just look at yourself!” she gestured up and down my body, shaking her head. “You look like a popsicle.” 

“I’d rather freeze than get closer to that thing.” 

“For God’s sake, get a grip. It’s been long enough.” 

I gritted my teeth, desperately trying to stop myself from shaking so much. I looked over at my tent, the light from the fire reflecting off the fabric a little too brightly. The forest clearing we’d stopped in was so large, yet the patch of ground next to where I erected my tent was where Sadie decided to build the fire. Brilliant. 

“Sixty-one hours is ‘long enough,’ huh? You say it like it’s easy.” 

She tossed her prodding stick into the flames, rubbing her forehead with her eyes closed. “No, it’s not easy, but you seem to forget that it happened to me too. And I’ve managed to keep my sanity. Maybe if you stop keeping track of how many hours had passed since, it could help” 

“Put the fire out.” 

She let out another sigh, looking up into the star-studded sky. “Okay, how about this, hm?” she stood up and began to disassemble my tent, pulling the pegs out one by one before she dragged the tent over towards me, grunting with the effort. I watched her the entire time, seething internally, but I couldn’t get any closer because of that horrid fire. She threw her handiwork down in a pile at my feet and clapped her hands together once. “You make your tent up again over here and freeze to death. How’s that sound?” 

“Better than having it burn down with me in it because a gust of wind spread the flames a little too far.” 

She threw her hands up in exasperation, walking back to the fire, the frozen grass shattering under her feet. “You know what, fine! I’m cremating your corpse in the morning, I hope you know that.” 

“Fuck you,” I mutter in response, reaching down and sticking a gloved hand out of my blanket to grab the fabric of the tent. Almost immediately, I felt the sting of the cold even through my glove, and I hissed, clenching my hand into a fist.  

“Having trouble?” Sadie asked, already having reached the fire and sitting back down next to it, holding her hands up and rubbing them together occasionally. 

“You’re just a heartless bitch, aren’t you?” My hand retreated back into the relative warmth of my thick blanket, and I glared at her. “That’s why you don’t give a shit about what happened.” 

Without even looking at me, she gave me a brief thumbs up. “Yup, that’s me. Heartless bitch.” 

“You don’t even give a fuck, why am I bothering to talk to you,” I mutter, sitting down on the frozen ground and curling into a ball, just looking at the mess of a tent in front of me. 

“You only think that because you’re an irrational dickhead.” 

I click my tongue in annoyance. “That wasn’t for you to hear.” 

“Reece, why the fuck are you blaming fire for what happened?” 

“Because it’s fire that did it, and the fact that you’re just okay with that is disgusting. My wife died in that fire, Sadie.” 

“So did my brother, and both my parents,” she said, placing another few logs on the blaze before she stood again and opened her tent zip, sitting in the entrance with her knees up to her chest. “If you think I’m ‘okay’ with that, you’re insane.” 

“Then?” 

She squinted at me. “Then what?” 

“The fire?” I said, gesturing towards it. She shook her head. 

“I don’t blame fire for what happened.” 

“How could you not?” I snapped, and her jaw clenched. 

“Because fire doesn’t think, it’s fucking fire!” she shouted, her voice echoing against the thick tree trunks around us. “It doesn’t just decide ‘hey, today I’m gonna burn down this village and everyone in it for fun.’ Is that what you think? You think it decided it was going to kill hundreds of people? It just fucking happened. Nothing made it happen, nothing forced it to happen, it just did.” 

I didn’t say anything. I just gazed into the flames and listened to the crackling, as Sadie retreated inside her tent.