TRANSITION by Virginia Hainsworth

She looked up into the morning sky and allowed the softness of the occasional unblemished cloud to soothe her.  It instilled a calmness which seeped from her upturned face down throughout her whole body.  She stared past the cobalt heavens and imagined that she was seeing beyond the canopy, into an infinity which beckoned.  Never before had she felt so ready, so prepared.

She allowed her eyes to close.  Images of chamomile to smooth her brow, marjoram to settle her stomach, rosemary to ease her thoughts.  She conjured the taste of sage on her tongue, sage to enhance the wisdom which had cost her so dear during her young life.  And she savoured the memory of cooling mint, for she was about to need it.

She listened to the whispering of burning straw and the spitting of wooden splinters.  She called upon all her powers to dispatch peaceful blessings to her captors. They would, she knew, look upon her murmurings as curses. And the memory of her moving lips would make them shiver as they later sat in front of their glowing hearths.  She pitied them.

The heat, when it came, was ferocious and penetrating, dissolving all thoughts which had gone before.  It assaulted every inch of her body and pounded her mind. 

And yet there was a part of her, deep within, which some would call her soul, which resisted all external pain.  It remained constant and, as she had healed others, so it healed her.  It rose above her tormentors and fled her agonised body.

Eventually, as the embers began to cool, she was gone.  For now.