The first thing Alex noticed was the silence.
Not the comfortable kind—the heavy, woolen hush that falls after snowfall. No, this was a brittle silence, the kind that shatters against your teeth when you try to breathe through it.
The fireline had passed six hours ago, but the smell of smoke still clung to everything—the trees, the soil, the skin of his arms. He sat on the bumper of the engine, helmet resting by his boots, lungs pulling shallow, sharp breaths that tasted like copper.
“Hey,” said Rosa, dropping beside him. She was a veteran, fifteen years on wildfires, her dark braid stiff with ash. “You’re holding your chest like it owes you money.”
Alex gave her a weak grin, though his fingers were still clawed around the edge of his ribs.
“Just… feels tight. Like the air’s pushing back.”
“That’s panic talking, not your lungs.” Rosa reached for her canteen, sipped, and handed it over. “Drink. Then listen.”
The silence broke—not with voices, not with birds returning, but with Rosa’s steady inhale. She exaggerated it on purpose, loud enough for him to hear: air in through the nose, slow, like pouring water into a jar. Then a pause. Then the exhale—long, steady, audible, like letting that same water drain through your fingers.
“You sound like a leaky tire,” Alex muttered, but his lips twitched, betraying a smile.
“Good. Tires keep you moving. Now copy me.”
He tried. His breath caught halfway, chest jerking. The silence bit back. His hands shook.
“Don’t fight it,” Rosa said softly. “Notice it. Let it do what it does. Then give it a job: four in, hold four, six out. Let the exhale be longer. Always longer. Fire burns fast; we breathe slow.”
Alex closed his eyes. Counted four. Held. Counted six. The breath staggered, but it was a shape now, not chaos. Another. And another.
When he opened his eyes, the forest still smelled of death, but his chest had loosened a fraction. He could hear the scrape of another firefighter’s boots on gravel. The crackle of embers cooling. His pulse was no longer pounding in his ears like fists on a door.
“Better?” Rosa asked.
“Better,” Alex admitted. “Still feels like the fire’s inside me, though.”
Rosa capped her canteen, looked out at the blackened ridge, and nodded.
“Then we’ll teach it manners. That’s what breathwork is—showing the fire inside how to sit at the table without flipping it over.”
Alex laughed then, small but real.
And in that laugh was the first spark of calm since the blaze began.
When the sun rose the next morning, the forest looked like a battlefield. Blackened trunks stood like soldiers left behind, their branches pointing in directions that meant nothing anymore. The sky was pale, almost embarrassed, and the air was dry as paper.
Alex crouched by the supply trailer, hands fumbling with straps, his chest tight again. Every sound felt too loud—the metallic clink of tools, the snap of burned twigs, the hum of the generator. Each noise pressed against his nerves until they vibrated.
Rosa spotted him before he even realized he’d frozen. She walked over, boots crunching in the brittle earth.
“You’re chewing on your jaw,” she said.
“I’m fine,” Alex lied.
“Your shoulders disagree.” She crouched beside him, her gaze level. “Okay. Try this. Close your eyes.”
He did, though his lashes twitched.
“Now pretend you’re smelling coffee. Not burnt forest—coffee. Breathe in through your nose like you’re taking the steam in. Slow. Don’t sip, draw.”
Alex inhaled. He could almost taste the imaginary warmth, bitter and rich.
“Now let it out like you’re blowing on a spoon of soup that’s too hot. Soft. Controlled.”
He exhaled, lips barely parted, and his shoulders dropped a fraction.
“Again,” Rosa said.
They repeated it three times. Each breath stretched time wider. The harsh clatter of the camp softened, the edges blunted. Alex’s hands, which had been twitching against the strap buckle, finally stilled.
“What’s the point of all this?” he asked, opening his eyes.
“The point,” Rosa said, straightening up, “is that fire doesn’t just eat trees. It eats your calm. You feed it every time you let panic cut your breath short. But when you breathe like this? You’re starving it.”
Alex blinked, surprised by how much sense it made.
“You think I’ll ever get good at it?” he asked.
“Breathing?” Rosa snorted. “You’ve been doing it since you were born. Now you’re just learning how to drive it instead of being dragged behind it.”
For the first time since joining the crew, Alex believed her.
And when the wind shifted suddenly, carrying the faint crackle of smoldering brush from the ridge, his chest tightened again—but he remembered Rosa’s voice.
Coffee in.
Soup out.
And the panic loosened its grip just enough to let him stand.
The call came just after noon. A flare-up on the north slope—nothing catastrophic yet, but the wind was twitchy, and twitchy wind could turn a spark into a monster in minutes.
Alex jogged behind Rosa and two others, their gear clattering like armor. The ground was uneven, soft with ash. Every step sent up little ghosts of smoke that stung the eyes and clawed at the throat.
By the time they reached the ridge, his lungs were already begging for mercy. Smoke rolled in uneven waves, the air thick enough to taste. His chest hitched, panic sliding in fast. His hands fumbled with the nozzle of the hose.
“I—can’t—” he gasped, eyes watering, knees buckling.
Rosa’s hand clamped on his shoulder, steady as iron.
“Alex! Look at me.”
He looked, vision blurred.
“Box breath. Now.”
Her voice cut through the smoke sharper than sirens. She raised her gloved finger, tracing a square in the air.
“In four. Hold four. Out four. Hold four.”
He tried. His first inhale was ragged, a cough interrupting halfway. His mind screamed that he was suffocating. But Rosa’s grip anchored him, her eyes demanding focus.
“Again,” she barked. “In. One, two, three, four. Hold. Out—slow, damn it—one, two, three, four. Hold. That’s it.”
The second cycle hurt less. The third loosened the iron band around his ribs. By the fourth, his body had remembered what his fear had made it forget: he could breathe even here, even now.
The panic retreated, small and sullen. Air came back—not clean, not easy, but enough.
“Better?” Rosa asked.
He nodded, wiping his eyes clear with the back of his glove.
“Good. Now put that hose to work before we both roast.”
Adrenaline took its rightful place—not as the enemy, but as fuel. Alex steadied the nozzle, water arcing into the smoke. His breath kept its rhythm, square after square, while the fire hissed in protest.
Later, when the crew regrouped at the line, someone slapped his helmet.
“Thought you were gonna drop back there, rookie.”
Alex just smiled, the square still alive in his chest.
Not today, he thought. Not today.
Night crept in fast, dragging the temperature down with it. The flare-up had been beaten back, but the crew was stranded on the ridge while they waited for transport. Radios crackled with delays—too much smoke, too many blocked roads.
They sat in a rough circle, helmets off, faces blackened with soot. Every cough echoed like a drum in the hollowed-out forest. Alex’s hands trembled, not from cold but from the leftover static of adrenaline.
Someone muttered, “Feels like the fire’s still in my chest.”
Another voice: “Like it’s burning under the skin.”
Silence fell again, heavy and brittle. Alex glanced at Rosa. She gave him a look that said, Your turn.
He cleared his throat. “Uh… Rosa showed me something today. Breathing. Like… making a box out of air.”
The others lifted their heads. Exhausted, irritated, but listening.
“You draw it in your mind. Four in, four hold, four out, four hold. Over and over. It… it kept me from passing out in the smoke.”
“Sounds like yoga crap,” someone said.
Alex grinned through cracked lips. “Maybe. But yoga crap works when you think you’re choking to death.”
He raised his hand, traced the invisible square.
“Come on. Humor me. Worst case, you get bored. Best case, you stop shaking.”
One by one, they tried. Reluctant at first. Awkward inhales, coughing, chuckles. But then the rhythm caught—slow, steady, shared.
In the circle of ash and shadow, a dozen chests rose and fell together. The silence changed. It wasn’t brittle now; it was thick, alive, like the hum of a single engine.
Alex felt it move through him—the panic loosening, the warmth spreading in his arms. Around the circle, shoulders dropped, jaws unclenched. Even the guy who had laughed muttered, “Not bad.”
Rosa caught Alex’s eye across the fire-scorched dirt. She didn’t smile, but her nod was enough: You led. You remembered. You passed it on.
For the first time since joining the crew, Alex wasn’t just surviving the fire.
He was teaching others how not to be burned from the inside.
The transport finally came at dawn, headlights cutting through the gray haze. The crew piled into the back of the truck, silent except for the groan of gear and the occasional cough. Everyone smelled of smoke and sweat, the stench so thick it seemed part of their skin.
Alex leaned against the wooden wall of the truck bed, eyelids heavy. His body ached in places he hadn’t known could ache. But underneath the exhaustion, there was something new—like a hidden muscle he had finally discovered.
His breathing.
Steady.
Predictable.
His own.
Rosa sat opposite him, sipping from her canteen. She raised an eyebrow. “How’s the fire inside?”
“Still there,” Alex admitted. “But it listens now.”
“That’s all you can ask for,” she said. “Fires don’t disappear. They just wait for the next spark. The trick is knowing you’ve got the tools to hold it.”
Alex looked around at the others—faces streaked with ash, eyes sunken but calmer than the night before. A few still traced invisible squares in the air without even realizing it.
He thought about how fragile calm could be, how easily it cracked under pressure. And yet, in the middle of smoke and fear, a few breaths—simple, deliberate—had changed everything.
He closed his eyes, let the truck’s rattling fade, and drew in four counts.
Held.
Out six.
Held.
The fire outside was mostly out. The fire inside was no longer a tyrant, just a guest.
By the time they reached camp, the sun was rising, turning the blackened ridge into a strange gold. Alex smiled, faint but real.
The breath remained.
And that was enough.