The embers guttered, belching out little wisps of grey into the dying air of the evening. She sat quietly, arms loose but hands closed tight, unmoving except for an occasional slow blink and a gentle, slow furrowing of the brow.
Her face was gouged with shadows beyond her years; another night she had slept ill, and the dreams were becoming a pounding, slow fear. If they were dreams, the ones where her sleeping self saw the end of the grey roads that her waking self saw open and stretch into the distance. Tired, deep into her bones, her eyes slunk down into the embers.
Much in her was still pained by who she was becoming, but she closed her eyes and let the pain flow into her all the same. She opened them, and saw the embers again, wreathed in their last halos of ash-flakes, little red angry angels dying in a world of grey. She spoke into the darkness, for no ears but her own.
"I desire no pain, but I do not deny it. In frost, it drives me to the flame. I seek no revenge... but I demand a reckoning."
She opened her hands. Two more coals. She let them fall onto the embers, gave a wry, shadowed smile, filled her lungs with the fast-cooling air - and breathed life into the flame.