FIRES

Written on October 16, 2021 (♎︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2021 for prompt No. 13: That's Gonna Leave a Mark (Burns).

---

When Olan refused the king's request for a final interview, Delita did nothing to force the matter. Doomed men had a power to command that was beyond him; a pyre—in its way—rose well above a throne. When they met as sufferer and witness, Delita did not try to pass any message beyond the flames.

He let it weigh on him without letting it grow heavy: that sense of something unspoken. In all the imagined conversations that might have gone before the fire, Delita never said those words his mind still traced:

I know what it is to burn.

---

BACK