The air is filled with smoke.
The smoke fills her lungs.
Her lungs burn.
And where there is smoke, there is fire.
She trembled in the center of it all. All around her as far as the eye could see, there were flames of all the myriad of flame-colors dancing in the non-existent breeze. But mostly, there were reds and oranges and yellow, leaping up and filling her vision with their sprightly charms.
Though the flames licked at her sides, trying to burn her, singe her pelt, she felt none of it.
But as the flames grew larger, climbing up higher and higher all around her, her heart beat louder.
It thrummed.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
It beat so loud that was all she could hear.
And it burned.
The flames tried harder to burn her, but couldn’t.
Her heart grew hotter, beat louder, burned brighter.
It was settled in her chest like an ember, glowing with deadly, passionate, silent, tearing heat.
Oh, how it burned.
The doe stood there, so still, so silent with her ember heart, a heart filled with memories and dreams gone and past or never lived.
The sound of her heart beating grew deafening and when she could no longer hear anything but the thumping of her heart. She felt herself being burned from the inside out, every memory she could conjure serving as fuel to the fire that filled her chest and consumed her bones.
She continued to burn until nothing but her heart remained, a charred, smoldering coal of dreams of futures passed.