Sometimes she is beautiful. She treads in a flowing red gown, neckline low, sleeves slitted. She is a lithe creature, and the crimson and burgundy silks accentuate her sharp and balanced figure. Her skirts swirl down her strong legs and settle into a pool of soft bundles at her feet. If she were to dance and twirl, her dress would surely come alive. She would look as if she were on fire.
Her every movement would be accompanied by flames leaping and pirouetting and stretching and crackling. It would be a dance of passion, a dance full of energy and awareness of life that would surely be beautiful beyond imagining. But even more breathtaking would be the balance in which she and her dress of fire coexist in. They would dance in synchronicity, her every jump supported by the strong arms of her red partner, their every step carefully and spontaneously choreographed. She is on fire, but her burning companion would never harm or betray her. So long as she is dancing, the flames live. In one way, the fire depends on her more than she does it. It is the flames that make her a breathtaking sight to behold. They make her even more beautiful than a goddess. But without her, there exists no fire.
When she finishes her dance, her skirts will swirl around her legs once before settling at her feet. The flames may no longer exist, but her dress does not seem to have lost the brilliancy it had attained while alive. Sometimes though, the fabrics seem to settle gratefully, as if they are tired. They return to being just an attractive gown, with no sign of having ever been more than they seemed. When that happens, the girl on fire will wonder whether such a passionate dance had ever existed. Maybe she was just going mad. Fire and madness make a good couple, she would think.
The girl herself will have cooled down by then. Her cheeks will retain their tinge of rouge for some time, but the brightness in her eyes will not last long. Her hair pins are loose, and in another dance her hair might even escape them to fan out amongst the twirling flames. Her breathing has since slowed, and her chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm.
She will want to cry. But she is fire, she has been fire, and one day she will be fire again. Fire does not cry, and she will remind herself that she must be strong, deadly, mesmerising. She cannot cry, because fire never longs for heat and passion. Fire dwindles when it is dying, and from ashes it will leap back to life once more. She must remind herself of that. She may no longer be fire – she may never have been fire – but she had been touched by life and death and fear and passion and heat and blindness. She must remember that power. If she cries, then even the shadow cast by the flames of her dance will surely die.
Sometimes the girl is beautiful, but during such reflections, her beauty knows no worldly bounds.