Let it Burn
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Notes: Song is the school kid spinoff of Deck the Halls with one
word changed.
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She had watched him burn. She. Herself. With her friends. Seen him
be consumed by the mage born flames, watching the stone crack and
shatter from the heat, the oil-like blood exploding into balls of pure
light. Now she watched this place do the same, and another place, and
some people ... Again and again in played through her mind. His image
overlaying every flame till she watched the fire just to see his face.
The face that was long blackened and burned to nothing, a charred stone
mask, completely hollow.
Deck the halls with gasoline
She had held that mask in her hands once the embers cooled, turned the
shell over and over in her hands, held it up to her face to feel what he
had felt like ... and she hadn't wanted to take it off ... not then, not
ever, never again.
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
When she kept the shell, they wondered. When she carefully scrubbed the
soot off and washed it, they had smiled and shaken their heads. When
she broke it in half and began to grind down the ivory surface, the
blue pigment ionized from the intense heat, they worried. When she
replaced the blank eye socket with her own star etched blue pendant,
they began to watch her. When she had affixed the smooth, blank, white
mask with it's star etched, blue eye and odd part smile permanently to
her face, they thought her insane.
Light a match and watch it gleam
She was anything but insane. The flames had seen to that. Burning,
cleansing fire had seared away all traces of insanity, all touches of
innocence, all shadows of eccentricity. The fire had seared her clean
and white, pure as snow. Just as it had seared him.
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Her friends didn't believe her when she had told them, without emotion,
that she was fine. It didn't matter really. She understood now,
understood the fire, understood herself. In the burning flames she had
faced the cold grip of reality and been warmed by the burning heat.
Watch the castle burn to ashes
Now she watched them. The fires. The people who ran from the all
knowing truth concealed in the inferno. Didn't they understand? No ...
only he had understood, and he had showed her the truth.
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
The castle was burning now. Red light licked at every stone and
balcony, ate along the tapestries and wooden floors, flickered on the
edges of fountains, blazed in the gardens. People were running away,
but she didn't. She walked into the conflagration, stepped through the
burning stones and flaming floors, the crimson light washing her mask
red and the bathing her skin in a blood touched glow.
Now aren't you glad you played with matches?
The fools. Here was the source. The throne she had set aflame to
show them. She had learned there was one constant: everything burns.
Even your friends, even your heart, even your soul. So let it burn.
That's what he had said, wasn't it? When she had tried to stop the
fires that ate at him and consumed him even as he opened his heat
cracked lips to speak. When he had looked her straight in the eyes and
told her a single searing truth, "Let it burn."
Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Amelia smiled, a smile that matched the mask, that kindled in her one
blue eye and sparkled in the depths of the false one. Yes ... let it
all burn.
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