The smell of ice fish is heavy in the air, the smell of smoke hot on its tail. It is from the pot on the stove that would've been filled with Teejay's soup. Yam is also on fire, the broth thick enough to be cut with a knife. Soon it too will become smoke and a tale of despair.

Esther sits heavy on her chair, too winded to breathe. The thick smoke billowing around the parlour like a nightmarish cloak presses her into her seat and towards the edge of her consciousness. It falls on her hair and colours the few remaining black strands a shade very much like the rest of her hair. If this was any other time, she would dust it off and shout 'Who are you trying to call old?'

Now though, her hand, in a last ditch attempt at survival, falls clumsily on the table, reaching.

Her kin beckon and she wonders fleetingly if they are angry with her. It has been years since she let them pull her out of her body. Would they stop her from returning? Worried, her hand flies to her neck where she was marked as a child.

When the firefighters arrive masks over their faces, Esther's still form is bathed in the vegetables her hand knocked over, her inhaler still out of reach.

The first, a bear-shaped man rushes into the kitchen and tries to use his hammer to break her gas cooker. His colleague immediately stops him and promptly turns the gas off, glaring at the foolish man.

Someone touches her cold arm and her new form looks down from her place on the fridge. The man probing her arm with calls of 'ma'am' spots her inhaler and sighs, asking the others to move her as he searches the house for casualties.

There was no fire, but wasn't Esther taught when she was a girl that smoke is a very dangerous substance? That was the reason she never got pressured into smoking. Well, that and her asthma.

They take her to the general hospital where she fights the urge to smack the nurse at the Accident and Emergency Unit. The girl asks useless questions in drawn-out syllables and takes no real action until her colleague, a tiny human resembling a child playing dress-up, rushes inside and begins chest compressions. Esther feels the administration and wonders at the strength in the girl's tiny arms. Good Nurse orders Quack Nurse to set up the oxygen and commands the stupid firemen to call Esther's family.

It takes the nurse many minutes to resuscitate her because Esther finds she enjoys the peace in the in-between, but when Teejay comes in with a bawling Sarah, she lets go.

This is the part Esther hates– returning to her body. Her limbs become leaden and her lungs feel heavy despite the lifesaving breaths the nurse lends her. When she finally gasps, everyone in the unit clap and hail the nurse for a good job done.

Esther just wants to sleep and be done with the day's annoyance. It would be hard to wash those pots and the yam was ridiculously expensive. Now Teejay would spend the money he would've given her for her new wrapper on her hospital bills.

Anita walks in and glares at Esther, eyes conveying her irritation. She has her luggage with the sticker on it, and Esther knows it is to guilt trip her. Anita had always suspected Esther and death had some sort of kinship but could never outrightly accuse her of anything.

"So, mummy decided to 'almost die' today of all days. Just so I'll miss my flight, abi?"

Sarah slaps Anita's head. "Are you mad? Listen to the rubbish you're spewing because you want to go and see man."

Esther did not do it to stop her last child from traveling—she would never willingly sacrifice yam, but looking from her dancing kin to her wild child, she flirts with the idea of future collaborations.