Phoenix.

I forgive you.
The words escape her mouth, like wisps of smoke set free from the burning embers of a cigarette.

She suddenly panics at the impending sense of loneliness. Those words had become her constant companion. She frantically runs after the wayward words in a futile attempt to recapture them and hold them neatly inside her.

No, they're too far from my reach.
She slumps down on the cold linoleum floor. She had held on to the thought for a long time, the thought of forgiveness, the ideals of reconciliation. She had nourished them insider her, as a mother nourishes a growing fetus. Now, she had let them go. Doubt lays hold of her, in her exhausted state.

She wonders if she's ready. She wonders if they're ready.

The growing realization of the journey ahead looms ominously above her and surrounds her, like flies drawn to ripening fruit. She tries to swat them away. I can't. I can't do it. What if I die?

But the conflict of desire and comfort and self-denial for the purpose of love and obedience is an ever-persevering Mentor. She knows, as history has foretold and from the stories of old, that in the asphyxiation of her own pride, a new self emerges. One stronger than the last. One who knows love. One who knows forgiveness.