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Oct. 8th, 2007 10:45 pmThe fire is everywhere.
Men with crowns of fire, running, falling, screaming; horses screaming, hooves battering at wooden stall walls -- it's all curiously distant somehow, abstract.
Lines of flame radiate outward from her feet, from her hands, spreading over the grass, over the pebbled walks, through the air itself. She stands at the center of a web of fire, slowly widening over the grounds.
The good-mind pulses wildly in the air, its message beating at her, CHARLIE STOP IT STOP IT RIGHT NOW, but the fire's stronger than the good-mind. It's stronger than anything. Including her. She can direct where it goes, but she can't make it stop. Except by sending it where it can't survive.
Or by pulling it back in.
-- You think you want to keep doing this? Rainbird asks, sitting on the edge of the hayloft with the pistol in his lap.
She turns slowly to look at the tall brick tower, the kids' dorm, across the smoking lawn. It wavers slightly in the shimmering heat, darkens to black glass.
He holds out his empty hand to her, and fire wreathes around it. -- Come on. Show it who's boss, right?
-- Right, she breathes.
-- Good kid.
She takes a step forward, upward, keeping her gaze fixed on his approving grin, his steady eyes behind the spill of his unruly dark hair. And as the fire swells and billows around her, buoying her upward like water, she is aware of heat but no pain.
Men with crowns of fire, running, falling, screaming; horses screaming, hooves battering at wooden stall walls -- it's all curiously distant somehow, abstract.
Lines of flame radiate outward from her feet, from her hands, spreading over the grass, over the pebbled walks, through the air itself. She stands at the center of a web of fire, slowly widening over the grounds.
The good-mind pulses wildly in the air, its message beating at her, CHARLIE STOP IT STOP IT RIGHT NOW, but the fire's stronger than the good-mind. It's stronger than anything. Including her. She can direct where it goes, but she can't make it stop. Except by sending it where it can't survive.
Or by pulling it back in.
-- You think you want to keep doing this? Rainbird asks, sitting on the edge of the hayloft with the pistol in his lap.
She turns slowly to look at the tall brick tower, the kids' dorm, across the smoking lawn. It wavers slightly in the shimmering heat, darkens to black glass.
He holds out his empty hand to her, and fire wreathes around it. -- Come on. Show it who's boss, right?
-- Right, she breathes.
-- Good kid.
She takes a step forward, upward, keeping her gaze fixed on his approving grin, his steady eyes behind the spill of his unruly dark hair. And as the fire swells and billows around her, buoying her upward like water, she is aware of heat but no pain.
