she learned a lesson back there in the flames; any

[Cordis]

She has been lost for a long time. She wanders to places with no name or history and she tries to lose herself there, another stupid wanderer, and she pretends she has no name or history. Pretends there was never a woman she loved so wholly that it’s destroyed her, pretends there was no love so sweet she’d kill or die for it. Once, when she is desperate, when it’s her hundredth or thousandth night of waking alone, she tries to wipe her own memory. Like sewing up her own wounds. But her hand shakes – the knife slips – and instead she wakes several hours later with a bruise she can’t explain and a stain on her chest of something dark and foul. She doesn’t know what happened, but she still remembers her lover. She wants to stay lost. Stay in these nameless places where nothing can be linked to memories, where it’s white and quiet and nothing. But sometimes she walks. And she slips from unknown lands into known ones, and then she’s back in the meadow, and the memories are like a hammer to the chest. She looks the same as ever. Molten silver from head to toe, and caged in lightning. It sparks about her like a shield, her own form of razor wire, keeping her quite literally untouchable. Her eyes are the only betrayal, laying sleepless and hollow in their sockets. Back. She’s back. c o r d i s I’ll touch you all and make damn sure that no one touches me