"In life after life, in age after age, forever"
Isra stands still as a statue and imagines herself as eternal as a bit of marble cracked through with black and silver. Everything in the soft, fragile parts of her (what little is left) flinches and shivers as the flames catch on wood, and silk, and flesh. And when Katniss starts to burn it takes everything in her to remember that there are things in the world like magic, and healing, and tomorrow. She wants to bellow out and try to turn every inch of death creeping black through that body on the pyre to life.
She wants to be a god so that she might never see another thing like this.
Her hoofs are quiet as she steps to join Katniss again. Fable follows. He lifts a wing to cover their heads from the ash that's starting to fall. Something quivers in his ocean-monster blood to be this close to fire and death (he, like Isra, will always prefer to drown).
For hours Isra stands with Katniss. At some point the smell makes her wants to gag, and turn away, but still she remains hip to hip with her Champion. She swallows down every emotion and tells herself over and over again that she is marble. The rocks around their feet turn to soft summer grass and thick moss when Isra's magic rushes out with the need to do something, anything.
The tears have long since stopped falling, chased away by the heat and the smoke. Her body is crying out for water when the fires finally run out of wood (and meat) to burn. And it's not until Katniss collapses into sobs more violent than she has ever seen that Isra becomes anything other than marble. Before, in her old life, none of the slaves ever cried like this.
The sound of it makes every bone in her body feel like it is breaking.
She collapses beside Katniss. Fable lays down in the grass and moss with them. There are a hundred words she wants to say, a million promises, but all of them taste only like brine on her tongue. In the end she only rests her throat across Katniss's neck. Even when the sun rises as bright as joy, Isra still does not leave Katniss. She'll wait forever if she has too.
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