Weeks. Safara, a hardworking twenty-year-old province girl have questioned the cruelty of fate that even her optimistic and vivid vision towards the world has slowly becoming more vague. Why won't it be anyways? Being locked in a four-cornered rented house with a little touch of expensiveness and a family depending on her from afar without a hundred percent assurance of when to freely wander is likely being trapped in the middle of a never-ending fire. No matter how hard she'll try to escape, she'll still end up into useless ashes.

The outburst of COVID-19 and its successive victims in the city for weeks made Safara's life in more dire straits. She's only a new and lone stranger in the place but her wings got easily broken, unable to flap continually in working at a call center company. She have to work. Aling Cristina, her mother, can't sustain a big family's daily necessities by her only everyday income in selling vegetables in the neighborhood. Two hundred pesos or sometimes lower, won't do because her other four little siblings are also studying. Mang Gabo, her father, is also seriously illed and unexamined. He always insist not to just for them to save more money.

Poverty have really teased them so well that even their relatives can't lend a help because they have been facing it too. So, she had to stop even if she badly wanted to continue her studies. "Things will get better." That's what she thought. The city is a great opportunity in mind, for her to earn a lot and help her family most especially her father's medicines.

However, she's in total despair. How can she pay the bills and send some money when everything outdoor that always made people's life go on sadly stopped so sudden? She can't easily go outside. No work and no upcoming money. She sleeps at night and wakes up in the morning. Eat breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and scroll on the phone. Watch movies and take a nap. Wash her clothes and clean the whole rented house. These are the things that she's been doing over and over again. She's extremely bored and worried for her family but her parents told her to stay calm, behave, and never ever do things recklessly because her safety is more important.

One day, her mother called and informed the worsening illness of Mang Gabo because they're already out of medicine. They can't bring him to the hospital as well because of the money's absence and the fear of being exposed to the life-threatening virus that might just end her father and mother's life that easily, hindered which made her torn. She's like being fried in the middle of an unstoppable fire unable to make ways about it. She's also afraid of the fire. Who won't?

But then, with meticulous thinking, she decided to cross the fire with braveness and break the protocol in staying at home most of the time to achieve a certain idea in mind to earn money. She went outside by simply wearing her comfortable clothes and face mask then bought some vegetables as well as some other ingredients. What teased the situation more is the totally higher increased of prices. Thankfully, she managed to budget the money well. Yes. Safara's plan is to sell viands or snacks in the neighborhood and even in places where there are somehow large number of people. Some of them are those hard-headed ones who don't follow safety health protocols, and are skeptical about the virus. She's willing to risk her life for her family.

What do you thing will happen to Safara after crossing the fire? Share some of your thoughts below.

Thanks. Owe you big time!

Lead image edited in Canva.