* * *
The next time Felicia came to her senses, her first reaction was to take a gulp of air like somebody saved from drowning, and she realized it didn’t reek and taste of burned human but astonishingly clean.
Her first thought: I’m still alive.
Tentatively opening her eyes, she discovered her setting hadn’t changed. If at all, her vision was less clear now. It took her a moment to realize that she was lying on her back, and that darkness was creeping in, the sky displaying its last vestiges of sunset and misting over with dusk. The neither distant nor close walls, surely belonging to a building in ruins, were no more than dark shapes, but they didn’t terrify her.
There was pain, but it was remarkably less than before, and it felt different. It was more like a tingling all over her, as though not a foot or arm had grown numb, but her whole body. The tingling grew worse with each breath, and pain began to ebb and flow in a constant motion which lulled her into half-sleep.
She didn’t dare to look at herself again or to think—or, God forbid, to hope. For all she knew, death could still be around, hiding behind a corner to pounce on her as soon as she had succumbed to a false sense of calm. Or maybe she was going through several stages of dying?
After a while, she opened her eyes again, and around her it was dark. Her eyes were staring up into an endless void of blackness, a blanket onto which somebody had painstakingly stitched tiny sequins and pearls and specks of gold glitter stars. Swirls of shadow obscured the artful needlework above. Clouds. Once a big one had glided past in a stately manner, cool light bathed her and her surroundings, so much more welcome than the sun—though hadn’t that been different in the past? A stunning full moon hung in the night sky, regal and intimidating, yet at the same time reassuring and nothing if not a sign of the timid hope thrumming and humming inside her chest, increasing with each inhalation and exhalation.
The tingling had subsided, dulled down to a curiously sensual, only slightly painful sensation as though somebody were raking his fingernails across her skin or teasing her with tickles everywhere at the same time. She felt strangely raw, and weak as could be, but her will was stronger, and the memory of torturous pain lost part of its hold on her the longer she stared at the luminous moon.
After some more time spent recovering from what may or may not have been her death, Felicia moved gingerly until she was sitting, each motion uncoordinated and an effort that brought an inkling of the pain back. When she looked down at herself, she gasped, stared and stared, and stared some more.
Gone were the more-dead-than-alive, burned-out limbs of a monstrosity. She possessed healthy-looking arms and legs and fingers which were a miracle of wholeness. Never mind that she was naked and that she shouldn’t fully trust the moonlight. Her body was covered in soft, nearly translucent skin, thin and new and rosy-white like a baby’s.
Had she shed her skin like a snake? Crawled out of a chrysalis by turning like a freak of nature from a moth flown into the fire into a caterpillar and a butterfly? Had she… had she been reborn?
An image rose in her mind, startling and nearer to the truth than anything she had thought and felt before.
A red-haired, screaming woman trapped in a colossal fire and burning. A phoenix rising from the ashes, a splendid spirit straining up and ahead to join a fire dragon on its quest for escape.
Could it be true?
More scenes flashed across, like the highlights of a movie collected in one trailer, a minute-long clip of love and loss, fear and power, and above of all, of hope.
The longer she sat and stared, alternately at the bright, distant, enticing moon and at her bright, unfamiliar, recuperating body, the more she felt a sense of self creep in. She knew who she was, simply knew. Not just a name and general description as though she were viewing herself like somebody from the outside; rather, she was aware of her essence inside this skin. Something shone through, a part of her old life that she had carried with her through death or almost-death. The less pain and tingling invaded her thoughts, the more they wandered back for her to relive and remember, forever.
After minutes or maybe hours, Felicia summoned her new-found, as yet untested strength and pushed herself up into a standing position. Gingerly, she turned and surveyed her surroundings. Recognition dawned and she gasped.
This was the building which had burned on the night when she and Joshua had met for the first time.
Joshua.
For a moment, she wanted to fall down, crumble in a heap again and forget. Bizarrely, a moment later it was exactly the thought of him, his face, his voice, his taste and feel, that made her stronger.
She had more than one reason to live. She had battled death and won. She was still herself and sure that she’d discover her fire core and her dragon soon. And there was Joshua.
For some minutes, her mind was a chaos of thoughts, mostly of questions zigzagging, racing and overtaking each other, banging against the walls of her brain, bouncing off each other, and skidding round in dizzying circles.
Was it a sign that she had survived? Had somebody from above, some higher power or God Himself, interfered and given her this unique chance for a new start? If yes, why had she deserved it? What was expected of her? Would she have to pay dearly for making it through?
Felicia wondered why the bullet wound had affected her so strongly and strangely when surely it wouldn’t have been fatal to a normal mortal. Did pain trigger some secret self-preservation mechanism that made the fire inside her take over? Was it fear that had acted as a trigger rather than the physical agony?
One of the questions bullied its way to the front and nearly knocked the breath out of her.
Was she immortal?
Or had she passed death by in the last possible moment, escaping by a hair’s breadth and reassembling herself rather than being reincarnated or reborn?
Another question demanded her attention, and made a tremble rock through her weak form.
Could this happen again?
Oh God, she would never survive all the horrors again! If she were given the choice, she’d prefer to die. Then again, she hadn’t been given any choice this time around, so how could she hope it would be different if there ever was a next time?
She stifled a scream, pressing a white-knuckled fist against her mouth until her teeth dug into the raw skin, and jolting herself out of the craze by the pain it caused her.
If she let her mind take over now, she’d be lost forever, reduced to a blubbering fool. Madness was lurking in the background, sharpening its claws and grinning knowingly.
No, she would not give in.
She had not gone through living hell to go raving mad.
Glancing down at her naked body, ghost-like and shivering in the moonlit night, she squared her shoulders, and lifted her head, although it was by far easy. With a last longing glance at the moon, she turned and painstakingly picked her way deeper into the ruins of the burned-out house.
For now, there was nothing to do but wait. She crouched down in a corner surrounded by stones and collapsed beams, folding in on herself, as if it was important to keep herself in and accept the resting place this new body—resembling her old one, as far as she could judge—was offering.
Something or someone whispered into her ear.
The time is not right.
She listened, and she understood on some deep down level in her subconscious mind.
Her time would come.
Chapter 19