Words were power once. Words had been a wintery wind binding her life to that one perfect moment, preserving her glittering past. The wind had betrayed her, trapping her in a cage as cold as ice but as glittering as the sun, trapping her in the hollow shell of the only thing she'd ever wanted, trapping her where the screams raging in her mind echoed around her as little more than muffled whimpers, a dissonant din, a faint shade of the shrieking storm that only she could hear.

Fire came as a relief, allowing her to sink, finally, into silence.