The little girl's heart was beating firmly against his chest, and the smoke that spread to her lungs made breathing difficult. She trembled all over her body, although the flames blazing a few metres away heated her skin. "Natalia" her father's broken voice penetrated her ears and she moved faster.
She ran to the stairs and literally stumbled down the stairs: "Папа." Her voice was thin and she seemed incredibly fragile as she climbed down the stairs in search of her parents, with the flaming flames always behind her. She couldn't think clearly any more and could barely keep track of the situation. The sudden heat and the desperate screams of her mother had ripped her from her sleep and she had left the bed in a hurry when she had seen the flames flare up in her room. That terrible image of the flames eating their way through the house was something the girl had never dreamed of.
"Here I am, my darling," she instinctively followed the male voice and saw her father, who had beads of sweat running across his forehead: "Come here. For a moment her heart made a sentence and she hoped that her father's strong arms would give her the security she so longed for at that moment.
When he arrived, he put one hand on her shoulder and drove the other through her curly red hair. His facial features had become soft, which was atypical for the otherwise so hard man, and the little one thought she could make out tears in his eyes. He lovingly stroked his daughter's sweaty hair out of her forehead and for a moment just looked into her bright green eyes before he started talking. "You have to do something for me, Natalia."
She just nodded quietly, totally fixated on the man in front of her, in whose eyes the flames were reflected. For a moment he detached himself from her to reach for one of the blankets lying on the sofa and then returned to her. Gently he put the piece of cloth around her shoulders and covered her head so that she could barely see.
"Ivan! Her mother's desperate cry sounded dull in her ears and she turned her head to look around for her. Her father gently put his hands on her cheek and forced her to keep looking at him: 'I want you to run to the front door as fast as you can and then count as soon as you're out and keep running until you reach ten. Can you do that for me?" Her whole body was numb, but the man's words burned into her brain.
"Yes, папа," she confirmed with a trembling voice and tried to read his face. Shortly he lowered his wistfully gaze and it almost seemed as if he would have to blink away tears. Then he raised his head again and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a little rag doll with the same red hair as her own that he put in his daughter's hand: "I love you, Natalia".
"She closed her fingers tightly around the doll as if it were the last piece of security she had left. "Yes, достояние. I'll see you in a minute," he replied, after a few seconds in which he had remained silent, "Now run along. Make me proud, my child! For a moment she scrutinized him attentively, but then nodded and ran, the blanket wrapped around her body, towards the front door.
With trembling hands she opened the door and stumbled out into the cold night through the lower flames, which were already flickering around the house outside and would thus lock the residents in for some time. As she took a deep breath, her father's words sounded dull in her head. Then she began to count inside, as she had promised her father, and just walked straight on. Her heart fluttered wildly against her chest like a bird trying to escape its golden cage.
At ten she stopped, breathing heavily, and looked around. In the distance, her parental home was ablaze and she was completely alone.