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3/9/25When I was 20 I returned to the charred husk of my mother's house. Fog hung heavy in the dawn air and the chill cut through to my bones, but still, I stripped. I picked my way through the burnt ruin in the skin she sought to destroy, shivering but warmed by the ghost of the fire that freed me from this place. Where my room used to be, the remains of my few childhood possessions lay, blackened and showing evidence of 12 years exposed to the elements. I recalled moments of joy, fleeting and blurred by the trauma my scars would not let me forget. I sat, alone in this room once again, and sifted through the items that had been my lifeline. Most were disgusting, rotting, melted. I picked up a small figurine of a medieval unicorn, scorched and discolored but remarkably intact. I gripped it hard in my paw, and stood, surveying the rest of the house. I found her remains. Just bones, brittle and black. I crushed her skull under my foot, shards prodding at my scales but not slicing through. I stared down at what was left of her, mind blank and pressure in my ears. She looked so small. I sat by the fish pond next to the house. The water was dark and stagnant, algae and dead bugs hanging on the surface. The sunrise crescendoed in vibrant pinks which shone off the water and off my scales. I laid back in the moss and watched the sky through the dark frame of evergreen treetops, the hard pressure of the ground against my stretched back. Something unnamable swirled in my gut and shone from my eyes. That such beauty could've been right outside my prison of 7 years. That I had reclaimed the beauty, reclaimed my life; that I could drink it all in now. The sun rose higher and the sky turned blue. Damp and cold, I lay there for hours, watching the trees sway.

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