The fire continued to move faster than DeeAnna could run. She refused to give up and pushed her straining lungs and muscles harder. Tthe flames gradually surrounded her. Heat and smoke pressed down choking her. The small dry patch of green upon which she ran rapidly shrank. The flames controlled everything; even her route. Ahead, the fire completed its encirclement of her. Where the two lines of fire had joined, the flames were smaller, the line thinner than anywhere else. If she could burst through, she would be in a spot still untouched by the fire. Instinct made her want to flinch away, to just stop in the center of the rapidly diminishing green. Fighting her panic, she forced herself to charge through the wall of flames. The flames scorched her skin and clothes, but DeeAnna burst through the fire. The smoke was so thick she could hardly see anything. Trees loomed out of the smoke. Thickets grabbed at her. She blindly careened through them until she stepped where there was no ground. DeeAnna tumbled into a brook. Dazed, she looked around. Fire had crossed over to the other bank, engulfing both sides of the stream. The water wasn't deep--a couple of feet at best. Bits of charged wood, ash, and badly burned corpses of small animals floated down the current. DeeAnna made sure she was thoroughly soaked, rolling over and submerging herself as much as possible before checking herself for injuries. She found only a few burns, bruises, and scrapes. The air just above the water provided a cool buffer to the heat from the fire. If DeeAnna sat up, her head was immersed in thick, choking smoke, but air just a foot or two above the brook was much more breatheable. DeeAnna crawled down the stream, hoping to find a deeper pool. She had no sense of time or distance traveled. Time was now. Where was here. Still, she kept moving downstream. (To be continued....) _______________________________________________________ This was supposed to be the easy render. Had the figure already? And a lot of the fire props, etc. Wrong! My Poser 6 wipes out its Pose Room whenever I try to load a V4 and up figure. So I had to re-create my character. The loading time for using V4 on my computer is very long, despite 3GBs of RAM. Then, Captain Dum-Dum invariably would add a skinmat that apparently had no texture file--again and again. This would put my Poser in lah-lah land forever and I'd have to shut it down. Finally got it done, so here it is. Thanks for all the fantastic and encouraging and helpful comments on this series. Jeremy CREDITS: Figure: Victoria 4.2++ with "Leah" head morph from "Everywoman," Arcebus's "Dirty Girl" skinmats, and 3dreams's "Boy Hair. Her clothing is Ravenhair's "Miss Dee Anna J" with Moyra's "Perils" textures. Fire materials and props: Monsoon's "Fire Scenes for Vue6" (Cornucopia3d).