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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