Characters: Maladicta
Rating: B

Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with Terry Pratchett or Discworld.

Strange Fire
by Amazon Syren

Dying would be easier than this.
I try not to think about how long I've been in here, but the years creep in through my ears, in the sound of my own footsteps on the flagstone floors, in the rasp of my breath, the solitary beating of my heart.
Five years.
Five years.
Five years.

But stop. I know where that kind of thinking can lead. I've spent too many nights huddled in corners with my hands clamped over my ears, trying to shut out the silence.
And it never works. It only makes it worse.

The sun can't kill me any more.
I tried.
Seven times I've tried, standing at the windowpane, letting the light wash over me.

The first time I tried it, it was agony. The sun burned my skin til it blistered and blackened, til tears ran from my eyes, and I had gone farther into the realms of anguish than I thought I could endure.
But I did not die.
Godsdamnit, I didn't die!
I crumpled to the floor, weeping from the pain, my skin cracking and flaking away like ashes.

I did not think I would have the strength to do it again.

But eventually, after another year spent talking to my own echo, I realized that I would prefer to burn than to go on living.
So I tried again.
And again.
And again.
It burned less, every time.

Now the Winter sun feels no worse than a hot summer night, and Summer sunlight feels like the air above a candle-flame.
There is no release for me there.

Even if there were, would it last?

My father keeps his eye on me.
There's a nest of crows on the battlements, and I've caught the touch of my father's mind riding them at night.
He's making sure I don't just walk away.
I wonder, if I did succeed in suicide, would he care? Would he come in the night, out of spite, and shed a drop of his own blood to bring me back from my freedom?

The hublights are burning tonight. The brightest I've ever seen. Cold fire, green and gold. Even inside, standing at my window, I can feel them tingling on my skin.
I remember, long ago, years ago, in another life, someone told me the Uberwald legend about how the hublights are the wings of a pheonix, dancing in flight. And how those green-gold flames would kill us with a touch.

It isn't true.

Not for me.

I went up to the battlements earlier tonight, the closest thing to freedom that I have, and let that strange, cold fire touch my skin. It flickered, green and gold and ghostly, at my finger tips, and danced in the palm of my hand.

But it didn't burn me.
Not really.

It was warm, but not as warm as the summer sun, and it hurt, but only like the prickle of pins and needles on my skin. It wasn't painful.
It didn't kill me.

I wish it had.