Eventide parts for Rhoswen like the red sea; leaving the passage bereft of sound in her wake. She watches the glitter and flicker of fireflies swimming in the big black natatorium of this winter-night. She sees the great shadow of the mountain and she knows its beauty like she knows nothing else in this cold, sweet world. It is by no accident that she beats this travelled pilgrimage high-high-high into a crowd of cotton clouds that shine through the lightless dark. She wonders how many times she has walked this path; she wonders, too, of how many times she will never again walk this path. Too many to speak of -- she knows infinity cannot be named. The fireflies begin to drift closer, as though they can hear the silence in her bones; as though their morbid curiosity could not be contained. What kind of woman was filled with silence?

As the incline steepens, as her blood begins to slow, as the world sheds its skin and burns anew, Rhoswen begins to see all the magic in her life she could never have seen before. Perhaps she had borne different eyes; eyes that were not her own -- that saw bloodrage in a sunrise, that saw hatred in love, that saw guilt in a child.

Sabine.

The earth bends beneath the gravity of her pain. The mountain comes alive (screaming, writhing) for it cannot bear the mellow tragedy of girl unloved by a mother. And Rhoswen cannot bear it either; she would not be here if she could. It is an old story; one that belonged to a thousand girls, a thousand mothers, but that did not make it any less hopeless. For when the woman presses her gaze upon that summer child, through eyes that were not her own, she can only see the bludgeon-blue in her stare, the sick-silver in her skin, the amorphous ungodliness in the way she moved and breathed and lived. She could not love a thing like that. 

She is a being without soul. A monster, a cyclical mirror-image of the pain that tore her arteries apart like plastic. It is all too easy to blame Him for this dying death that lives in the cages of her heart and Rhoswen is too jaded to fight that good fight -- she knows her fire is all but burnt out by the hand fate had deigned to deal her. 

But she has one more pyre to burn. 

As ancient rock melts into marbled stone and the slope leaps into step, Rhoswen slows to a halt upon the staircase leading to Veneror's hallowed cathedral. How the blackness weeps. It baptises her over and over again, as though it were begging her to stay, as though it could wash the sins from her brow and make right from her wrongs. She smiles, bright and tired. She knows it is a kind lie; she has spent six years lying and there is nothing upon this mortal earth that could keep her from the truth at last.

One, she is turning. 
Two, the church swallows her.
Three, Solis sings.
Four, Caligo watches on.
Five, it is time.
Six, she is scared-scared-fucking-scared.
Seven, her head is full of faces.
Eight, Reich - Rhaegar - her mother - her father - Acton - Aislinn - Seraphina - Eik - Bexley - Sabine 
Nine, Raum. 
Ten, Raum.
Eleven, fire.

And when she starts to scream, the Gods looking on cannot tell if it is out of relief or regret.