the cinders are falling like snow; raelynx

[Cordis]

She is not meant for motherhood. What fruit has spilled from her loins has turned – Ka, to nothingness (she thinks of her, her silver-maned daughter who grew up too fast and left without looking back), Electrum, lost to her (he drifts in and out of space in ways she cannot wrap her mind around), and Perse, to Him. (She prays Perse is dead, and prays forgiveness to forsaken gods for thinking such things. It is blasphemy to want her dead and it is blasphemy to hope she survives the hellhole that is His lair.) Indeed, it seems love sours at her touch, curdles. She spent too long painted in ash and screaming her throat dry, too long with the sounds of hellhounds at her heels, that she is impossible to love. (Someone did it once but we can’t say her name, there’s too much there, the name is an incantation, a spell to drive her mad.) (‘Naming things gives them power,’ she said once, speaking of Him. In truth, she had just been too afraid. In truth, the gold woman who took her heart has all the power Cordis can give. She is still afraid. ) She swears celibacy and it is easy when she lets no one touch her. She lets herself grow fierce. She has always reflected the sun, silver-bright like a sword. Sometimes the lightning crackles across her skin like a shudder and her hair raises on end. She likes it. She waits for the thunder that never comes. All around her the children are brought forth into the world. She can smell it in the air, the fecundity of their births. She dwells on her own children, lost. She shakes her head. She tries to forget their names. She is a woman long past redemption. c o r d i s she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake and she learned a lesson back there in the flames