You believe in fire, don't you? The immaculate substance that burns oxygen into light, the masterless element? Well, what about on a bitterly cold evening? Can fire become unreal in the face of iced-over doorsteps and air so fresh it might as well be alive?

One such December evening brought Jane Fulford's mother to the door. She burst in with an armful of firework boxes, chin tucked close to her neck and weary breaths flowing out of her in an avalanche of icy wind.

She banged the door shut, making it squeal on its hinges. It took Jane's mum a moment to collect herself – One, set the fireworks on the kitchen table, two, brush hair out of her face with her fingers, and three, hang her old jacket on a wire hat stand by the door.

With a sigh, she acknowledged an empty coat hook.

"Jane!" she shouted, pulling an air of positivity from somewhere deep inside her, like a vein of oil deep underground. Immediately an eight-year-old girl had shot out from nowhere, and tackled her into a hug.

"No school today!" she piped, talking into her mother's shirt. Neither of them tried to let go of the hug. It was the kind of hug that didn't want to end.

"How was it?" her mother asked, stroking her daughter's hair. A glazed look came over her eyes. No work tomorrow. Some miraculous feeling bubbled up inside of her, dampened by the fact that it was only one day.

Jane withdrew from the hug. "I cleaned my bedroom like you said. And also the dishes. I found a penny when I was playing outside, too!"

Her mother pursed her lips, eyebrows arching down to save a thought for later. "That's wonderful, Jane. What about your homework?"

Jane made a face. "Uhh."

This was enough to make her mother laugh. "Tell you what. You go set up the fireworks, and I'll see if I can scrape something together for dinner."

Jane's eyeballs just about exploded out of her head. "FIREWORKS?"

With a move like a jaguar on the hunt, the boxes were gone, contents jiggling as Jane burst out the back door. Her mother stretched, looked worriedly at the somewhat empty kitchen cupboards, and then the strangest thing happened; she genuinely smiled.

"Strike the match, I'll hold it in place," said Jane's mother. Jane knew how to strike a match, thanks to the times when the power went out. They preferred candles to torches, her mum and she. More romantic and mysterious. Something they didn't get enough of, in their tired little house. The flame bloomed at her fingertips, just a matchstick away. Chaos held steady by her youthful hands. She held it to the firework's fuse.

"Run!" her mother yelled. They ran away, laughing, to the edge of the yard. Jane was scooped up in her mother's arms once again. She hadn't seen a firework up close in ages, so she stuck her fingers in her ears.

The light was fantastic. The sound erupted, first like a whistling man, then louder. A thunderclap, an ecstatic crack of light, a rain shower of crackling zig zags in purple and green. It didn't go up very far, only around three meters in the air.

Both of them stared, mesmerized, until it was only smoke.

"I'll light this one," her mother said girlishly, running up to the box. She waved her hands around to disperse the smoke. There were two more large-ish ones.

For the rest of the night, they watched their dreams go up in fireworks, and all their worries blow away in the leftover smoke. The second one was red, the last one was white.

Jane sank into the grass, savoring everything. The immediate silence after the explosions was just as satisfying as the light itself. "Mum, what time is it?"

Mum glanced at the sky. "Eleven-o'clock." All the worry lines had smoothed themselves away. She sat down beside her daughter, feeling cool dewdrops on her hands and ankles. It had been bitterly cold, but not after running back and forth, lighting fireworks.

They sat there for a few minutes, silence ringing in their ears. The sky was a parade of multicoloured smoke. Distant bangs and sparkles whizzed from neighboring yards, just far enough away to be white noise. Distance from everything. They sat, separate from time.

Then, suddenly, everything changed. A violence of color spat out from the yard next door, from the house that no one lived in. Jane immediately stood up.

Balls of liquid light, flashing gold and silver and bronze, floated up into the air, did a semi circle in place like raindrops in a whirlpool, then fell back down. It was unlike any firework Jane had ever seen.

She said so. She felt riveted to the ground, unable to move. Momentum built up until she was running to the fence and jumping with all her might. But of course, she couldn't see over. It was fairly good wood too, so no holes to peer through. Finally, she turned to face her mother. "Wow," she said in an awed whisper. They were so fluid, so imaginative, so… so different. They were almost magical.

That was the moment when Jane Fulford decided she had to see who lived on the other side of the fence.