“Why is your wedding dress on fire?” Martin stood in the backyard, watching the flames turn the white fabric into orange and incandescent red and black and grey. The dress shrunk slowly, as if it was alive, almost hurting.

Serene, Felicity sat, legs crossed on the grass, next to a bucket of water.
“Ask George.”

Martin stared at her for a few seconds. Her voice didn’t betray any emotion he expected to find in a bride who just found out she’s not getting married after all. He turned around and headed back to the house, preparing himself to dodge questions from the other guests.
Inside, he found George looking at the scene from the window. He turned to Martin as he went inside.

“She’s going to leave a burned patch on my lawn.” He said simply and sipped his drinks.

“You’re not getting married.” Martin started. George nodded. “Why not?”
George turned again to look at Felicity and her wedding dress, now mostly ashes on the ground.

“I had a dream last night. In my dream, an airplane crashed at our wedding party. I woke up when I walked to the wreckage because my mother begged me to go look for her legs. I just couldn’t get back to sleep after that. Do you remember the last time I dreamed of a disaster?”

Martin remembered. The earthquake happened exactly as George dreamed it — on an overcast Sunday morning when most people were still home and not ready to flee from collapsing buildings or mudslides. He would’ve been trapped in the wreckage of his own home had George not called him in the middle of the night to warn him.

“And Felicity didn’t believe you?”

George shook his head and swallowed the pain with the last sip of his drink. His face was so pale his eyes looked on fire. “And I get her. What are the odds, right? But it’s going to happen. I know it. The farther away we get from here, the better. Now, let’s get another drink. I don’t want to be sober when it happens.”