VIGNETTE 4. BURNING BONFIRE.

The orange reflection on my face made it feel warm. I felt my skin burning, but I couldn't take my eyes off. It brought me feelings from my past.

***

A little girl was walking alone in a ruined village. She had found herself lost when all the people started running covered by an orange light, screaming. Even when everybody appeared to surround her, with those deformed faces, she couldn't find the faces she wanted. Nobody paid attention to her, not even when she started crying.

She walked the path she knew, but this time they weren't with her. What made them disappear? She didn't understand.

Someone was screaming fiercely:

'Burn. Burn with the flames of the Blessed Mother, sinner'.

Another someone yelled in agony.

'Hail Lilith', the first one said.

The girl was afraid that the man would catch her. That he would put flames in her body and her skin would turn red, frayed, like the bodies of the people around her. So, she continued walking the known path.

She arrived at a place she remembered differently. The roof wasn't burning yesterday. She couldn't remember seeing fire through her bedroom window. And the walls weren't grey like ashes. She entered the main door, and what she saw inside always remained burning in her memories:

Two calcinated bodies and a little bump in one of them.

A tear fell from her eyes.

Pappa, mamma, and…

Another tear.

All three bodies in a hug.

She closed her eyes tight. She didn't understand anything, but she will do it later.

She stayed a few hours there, crying, trying to make sense of her surroundings. But nothing makes sense when you are left alone like she was. Nothing makes sense when all you rely on is taken from you.

When she dried the last tear, she decided she had to go somewhere. But she was too young to know where. She was too young to know almost anything.

She looked for her bow. The bow her mother and she crafted. It was burned. She looked for her mother's bow, which she knew she would keep in a metal chest. Too big, but better than nothing. She took it carefully, making sure she put all the love she had seen in her mother.

She left a white flower between the hugging figures. The same white flower that her father had warned her of its meaning. She also took her father's flower bag, with the meticulous affection he put in everything.

And she left.

A few days later someone saw a girl entering the forest. It was two seconds before he was dead, burned alive.

***

My face began to sting. I had been looking at the fire for an unhealthy amount of time. My tears had almost dried off.

I discovered the pyre burning while following the petal path. First, I sensed some bright light, and when I approached it, my eyes saw the sinner inside the flames. My skin felt the warmness of the bonfire. My nose smelled the ashes. My heart cried for a human.

It was common for the Light guards to burn people outside villages. It was an awareness for intruders and bandits, witches, and other non-welcomed races. They called it The Inquisition. But it was really a slaughter. A carnage based on untrue principles.

From my father's flower bag, I took a white flower and put it at the base of the burning bonfire.