The fire arrived without warning, even though everyone in the village insisted they had heard it coming. They claimed it crackled across the horizon long before they saw the glow. They said it whispered their names and that it laughed. Mara had heard nothing, yet she was the first one to be caught.
The flames surged over the ridge like a predator set free. She ran until her legs felt as if they were made of smoke, and still the fire drew closer. When it finally reached her, it didn’t burn her skin or hair; instead, it consumed her memories. It obliterated her identity. It destroyed everything she had ever believed herself to be.
As the flames engulfed her and surged down the valley, Mara felt hollow, as if her past had been violently ripped from her chest and cast onto the pyre without her consent.
She didn’t have much time to wonder what remained of her before the ocean surged inland.
She stood in a field still smoldering as the ground beneath her softened. The grass transformed into foam, and the dirt turned to brine. The world tilted, and she watched a massive wall of water rise from nowhere, blue-black and pulsing like a giant lung.
It broke over her and dragged her under. But instead of drowning, she drifted through visions. A childhood birthday cake. Her mother’s perfume. A half-forgotten argument from years ago. These images swirled around her like fish made of light, fading as she reached out to touch them.
The deeper she sank, the quieter everything became, until all she could hear was a distant heartbeat. She thought it was her own, but it sounded too old for that.
When she woke, she was lying on cracked earth under a bruised sky.
Then the earthquake hit.
The ground buckled and roared like a wounded animal. A canyon split open beside her, wide enough to swallow mountains. She didn’t even try to run this time. The earth opened its mouth, and she fell into it as if dropping into a giant throat.
She landed on a bed of dust so fine it moved like breath beneath her. Shadows gathered around her. They stretched long fingers toward her feet, then her knees, then her face. Their touch was cold and curious.
She looked into their formless faces and saw her own pain mirrored back. Not her old pain, but something deeper, something that belonged to the marrow of existence itself.
When she stood and tried to walk, she realized she no longer had flesh. Her hands were bone. Her ribs showed through the thin suggestion of form that clung to her. She walked as a skeleton through a desert made of grey ash and crushed stars.
The wind there carried voices that rasped and fluttered. They said things she wished she couldn’t understand.
You are not yourself.
You were never only yourself.
Pain is your teacher, and you are still in school.
She wandered endlessly. She forgot what it felt like to be thirsty. She forgot the meaning of horizon. She forgot what it felt like to be touched by anything warm.
Her bones grew fragile. Her thoughts grew faint. Eventually, she felt her body disintegrate into dust, grain by grain. She drifted on the wind until even the memory of Mara faded away.
Darkness swallowed her.
Silence closed in.
And she remained there, unshaped and unthinking, until a single spark of awareness surfaced like a bubble from the depths of a deep ocean.
A presence gathered her dust and shaped it into an outline. Not quite a body, more like a sketch of one drawn in light charcoal. She hovered diaphonously, listening.
A soft voice broke through the dark.
“Why bother returning?”
Mara found herself lying beside a small fire in a place that looked half desert, half dream. Across from her sat an old woman whose eyes glittered as if they were made of constellations.
Mara’s voice came out thin and opaque. “I don’t know.”
“Because your life is still in motion. Even if you don’t realize it, you continue to seek,” the woman said. “If you had stopped moving and walled yourself off from your own self, Pluto would not have found you.”
The name evoked something in Mara, but she couldn’t identify it.
The old woman stirred the fire with a staff fashioned from a branch that looked oddly like bone. “You walk Pluto’s lands. Few do so willingly. Fewer survive whole.”
“I don’t feel whole.”
“You aren’t.” The woman smiled. “That comes later. If you want it.”
Mara watched the fire. The flames flickered in strange shapes with faces, symbols, and scenes from her past that warped whenever she tried to focus.
“I already understand pain,” Mara whispered. “Why do I have to keep experiencing it?”
“Understanding is not the same as depth; there is always another layer to uncover. Pluto teaches by dismantling our perceptions until we recognize our true selves. This includes acknowledging every unspeakable act we’ve committed, as well as the unselfish sacrifices we’ve made for others, even at the expense of our own lives.”
“I don’t want to be connected to any of this,” Mara said, her voice cracking. “I don’t want to remember what I’ve done! I don’t want to be held accountable! I don’t even know where to begin!”
“You never had a choice but to remember,” the woman said. “But I can tell you this: your suffering opens pathways for people you will never meet. You lighten what they cannot carry.”
“No! That isn’t fair!” The woman conceded. “Even so, you gave your permission. In the grand scheme, it was inevitable anyway. It simply is what it is.”
The fire flickered brighter before fading to a faint red hue. The old woman leaned forward, saying, “Pluto delivers both harm and healing, both key and lock, both wound and cure.”
Mara blinked and noticed that the woman had disappeared. Only the staff remained, standing upright in the sand.
Behind her, the desert shifted shapes. Dunes curled into staircases, and canyons twisted into spirals. A sky of bruised violet split open, revealing two suns that felt both ancient and new.
She continued walking because there was nothing else to do. With each step, flashes of her past returned to her.
Her lost marriage.
Jobs that disappeared like melting ice.
The home she could no longer afford.
The weeks she lived in her car, with her cats.
Pets she had buried with trembling hands.
Loneliness pressing against her chest until she could barely breathe.
Each memory struck her like a weight, but none shattered her. Not anymore. Something within her had learned to bear pain the way the desert holds heat.
She ascended a tall dune shaped like a rib and spotted a figure waiting at the summit.
It was neither man nor woman, neither shadow nor light. It shimmered between forms, as if it were constantly transforming into something new.
Pluto.
Mara felt no fear. She was too tired for fear.
The being looked at her with eyes that contained both wildfire and ocean depth. What is your power? Pluto seemed to ask.
She answered without speaking.
My power is what endures in me. It is how I know who I am. It is what connects me to my beginnings, and it is what takes me through ending after ending, and back again, to myself.
Pluto nodded. Suddenly, Mara noticed threads extending from her chest in all directions. Some were as thin as spider silk, while others were as thick as roots. These threads connected her to strangers, old friends, people who had hurt her, loved her, or didn’t even know she existed. Each thread pulsed with shared meaning, growth, and transformation.
She didn’t want to be linked. But she was. And there was beauty in that, even if it was wrapped in fire and darkness.
Pluto stepped back as the desert around her burst into bloom: flowers with glass petals, spiraling trees, and rivers of liquid silver. The world unfolded in a brilliance she had never imagined.
Pain gives way to joy.
Fear gives way to love.
Despair gives way to hope.
Darkness gives way to light.
She felt these new, stronger truths settle deep within her.
On the horizon, a doorway appeared, made of smoke. She understood it was the next stage of her journey.
Mara took a long breath. A full breath. A living breath.
She walked toward the doorway, carrying her contradictions with her, ready to meet whoever she would become next.
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