"Auren?"
"Sweet child…"
"Auren."
"Please stop this."
"Auren…"
"Take your hand off the stove."
"Auren! Enough!"
"Cool off, will you?" my mother says. "Such a grievous fire can't be good for you."
Their voices berate me at random. I've nearly forgotten them. Why? I need to hold on to it. Why am I slipping? I have to keep going, I hate myself for that.
This is cruel. So, so cruel.
I'm in the living room.
The rug has that lingering dusty scent that you know, definitively, as 'home'. There are strange textures in the wooden floors that you can feel intimately.
The dying fireplace embers are still too hot for comfort. I always preferred the cold. That's why I sit as far from the fire as I can, on the rug's edge. Bathed in the light, but not in its false sense of warmth; too passionate, too overbearing, too destructive.
