Reinette Sompt

The heat of it envelopes my back. It is not a warm blanket, no caress of summer days. It is violent, powerful, a wicked bomb growing behind me. There’s no thinking in the face of a sensation so cruel and wicked. I have no armor, but that is for the best - armor would dent and melt in the heat of this explosion.

In my arms, I clutch another. I must protect her. I don’t know why, but the need for it is consuming; is just; is the only thing able to move me now. I hold her to my chest, and shield her with myself as the world turns red and white behind my eyelids. As so often happens in circumstances of peril, I do not find myself praying, but falling into an internal quiet. There is the pain, a chaotic jumble of heat searing through my back and into my bones. Then, there is the directionless tumble.

I lose grip on my sword, on Vio - I rise as much as I fall, for a moment losing all my senses. I can smell nothing, can see and hear nothing. I feel hot all over, and realize eventually I am laying on metal flooring warmed by an explosion of my own making. I realize that the cold trickle over my warmed skin is blood coursing over burns. I realize I have no energy to move, my hands shaking even while the rest of me lays still and heavy.

Fire still plays in my mind, bright angels of it dazzling me. The acrid, burning stench of rubber is familiar, and my consciousness lapses in this critical moment. I think I hit my head. I see a thousand-thousand eyes of fire in the darkness of my mind, and hear voices so whisper-soft I cannot tell if they are my thoughts or spoken aloud. It would be a fine thing to die like this, it would be okay to let the blood pour out and the shackles of golden promises finally release. For a moment, the thought of letting go feels so sweet and tempting. I could. I could.

I won’t. The pain hurts, and it makes me remember I am not the only one hurting. My wife...

Livia was in her arms now, safe. No longer hurt. It took a moment for Reinette to realize she was crying, gently, from both pain and relief alike. To clutch the sunny, spirited woman who her heart was devoted to was worth the pain of living. It was worth it, to see Camille clutching Izar like the realm’s treasure. This was worth living, though her back still ached with the phantom pains of recent recovery. Even though she had been burned so often that she was lost in the great ocean of memories, their waves lapped up around her in a relentless tide.

There was another one, which rose greater than she had the effort to resist for long. The mage tried, worn and exhausted in body and aether alike. To feel the fighter’s breath on her fingertips, to touch skin and hair and be reminded they are again together was worth the fading effort. “I love you,” Reinette whispered to the nape of her wife’s neck, even though she was no longer able to ignore the nagging memory stuttering behind her eyes.

I am laying on the deck of the Red Rose, I think. Or the Bastian. It does not matter. My back throbs in time with my pulse, and Livia is safe - though sleeping. I don’t know yet she will sleep for some time. But there is a shaking. A shuddering. I look up to see a great, plumed fire rising from the facility we had so narrowly escaped.

Fear is a cold tonic, rousing me to stand as the fire devours the Allagan facility. I can’t breathe. I watch as the first eruption dies, thinking for a moment that the sight was finished. And yet, it begins again. Eruptions that bloom like spores across the rest of it, brightening even the metal structures beneath the island. I cannot move, between fear and fatigue, my limbs are far too heavy to move. There’s nothing I could do, watching as the island begins to fall into itself.

And then, it truly explodes. A destruction I’ve not yet witnessed. Books describe how stars die, collapsing in and then exploding out in great and unimaginable releases of energy. This is that, I think. A small star dying. I hear the soundless explosion - so loud it becomes nothing. It shakes the ship with unseen force, and after there is ringing in my ears. I am so afraid. The heat of the explosion warms my face, and I feel small in the face of it.

All I can think, in that moment, is that I regretted my words. I would not have traded Nathaniel for our lives. He is greater than me - able to do all the things I never could. I think - I am near to weeping with the grief of witnessing his loss.

I learn later he is not lost.

But the fire is herald of cruelty, burning me and my friends alike.

Reinette cried then, for all the fire she had witnessed in the fight and in her life. She had seen so much of it, and longed to see no more. The expedition was not over, and she would not yet leave, but she felt so weak and so heavy. It hurt to feel as if she was not done, when her whole body was hollowed out and turned ashen. She clung to Livia, to the last shreds of fair feeling and good omen, and muffled her cries.