Sorry this has taken so long. Thank you so much to all of you who are so fabulously patient, you deserve rains of chocolate and kittens. :-) Thanks to:

Leopardess, Night Goddess, Magelet, Cianna, Mandy, Eleyne, Adelaide, Dark Princess, Water Soul, Amber, Meg, Werepanther, Piper Rose, Innocent, Diomede, Midnight Haze, Queen Kat and finally the divine Domz.

Feedback is adored like hot chocolate, hot sun, and hot bread. I love hearing what you think, and criticism is very welcome.

The lyrics are taken from Beauty On The Fire by Natalie Imbruglia (Album: White Lilies Island). Gorgeous.
Ki

Chimera Part Eleven

Here it comes again
Cannot outrun my desire
Cover my descent
And throw the beauty on the fire

It began with a kiss.

In films, the happy ending was sealed with a kiss. But this was Blue, hewn from ice and seared by fire, a paradox, a mystery, and an enemy.

For him, endings meant one thing only.

So this was a beginning.

Maybe it was the first word of a peace treaty. Maybe it was the first bullet of a war. But it began something all the same, like a flame touched to a trail of gunpowder.

She had kissed him before, yes, but that had always been in hate, in anger, in fear, trying to shut herself away before he could plunder and destroy the most precious parts of herself. Trying to shock, or distract, trying to throw herself far from him, not writhing into the fetter of his embrace.

Now the connection crackled lividly, a distant roaring in her ears. Magic rampaged through her blood, leaping up at his touch with sizzling intensity; dragon power was mixed with it, heavy and potent, breeding something as unholy as he, and as helpless as she.

Unholy and helpless, like the distant hissing of fire chewing a path along a fuse to something far greater...

Maybe if they had been other people, there would have been thoughts and words and decisions, but there was only instinct and delight pulsing from the diamond-hard coldness where he sat in her soul. Time meant nothing, rationality meant nothing, even nothing meant nothing. The void itself could not throw her from this.

It began with a kiss.

X - X - X - X - X

"How are things with our sexy tennis player?" Tali asked as she met Lisa in the bathroom, where the usual collection of girly chats, make-up repairs and crying fits were going on. The dragon frowned at herself in the mirror, pulled her skirt down and the straps up. "Game, set and match?"

The made vampire shrugged, and dug a lipstick out of her bag. "Ye-es..."

"That doesn't sound good," the dragon commented. "Don't tell me you don't like what's under the packaging!"

Right now I'd Fed-Ex him to Australia, Lisa felt like saying, because he's not the last guy I kissed. He's not Cern, however much I kid myself.

"I don't know," she murmured, staring fixedly at her own expression so she wouldn't have to face the searchlight stare of Tali. "I guess he's just not my type."

"Hah!" Tali ran her hands under the tap, glaring at her chipped nails. "I nearly dislocated my wrist trying to fight off Mark Stephanos. Honestly, he's so slimy I kept expecting him to have tentacles. God knows what I've caught." She shuddered delicately.

Lisa blinked as she carefully outlined her mouth with gold lipstick. "Where was Jay?"

"Doing the Macarena," Tali said dryly. "With some girl whose chest resembles Silicon Valley. She just grabbed him!"

"Well," she felt compelled to say, "it's not exactly common knowledge that you two are an item." After all, Tali didn't really go in for public affection, though Jepar did and often had. When he and Chatoya had been dating, Lisa had often felt like slapping a fifteen rating on them.

"Guess so," the girl muttered. "Hey, have you seen Toya lately?"

"No. She disappeared. Ran off upstairs just before the Macarena started."

Tali froze. "No. I saw Blue go up there."

They stared at each other. "You're sure it was the same time?" Lisa said, feeling her skin go cold. Surely Toya wouldn't let him get near but then...who could stop Blue? What if he tried to kill her?

A nod, and her sapphire eyes shifted from coolness to concern. "You don't think..."

"Let's go and find her," Lisa said grimly. "Maybe it's nothing, but..."

A baffled Jepar shouted after them as they tore up the stairs, and then tried to disentangle himself from the very drunk girl who had clamped onto him like a limpet. They ignored him, though Tali cast one brief glance over her shoulder.

Why were there so many goddamn alcoves? Lisa thought as she and Tali each took a side of the gallery and began to elbow inelegantly through people, looking in alcove after alcove, balcony after balcony. The place was a warren of niches, filled with crowds or couples, most inebriated, some amorous, all in the way.

Then she came to the end, where there were less people, and not expecting to see anything, glanced at the final balcony.

Her mouth dropped open, and then Lisa actually rubbed her eyes to check what she was seeing was real.

It was.

"Have you-" Tali stopped as Lisa shushed her with one fiery look. "What?" Her gaze swung to the balcony. "Oh..."

There was only one person with that daring, beguiling dress and that wavy tumble of black hair. That tumble of black hair that the boy she was kissing had one hand tangled in, the other sprawled at her spine. They were stark against the night, black and blue, intertwined in their own world.

Lisa found she had bitten her lip so hard she was drawing blood, She heard Alisha make a small indignant sound and forcibly hauled the dragon into the relative safety of the crowd.

"Oh my god!" Tali shrieked, her ocean-blue eyes wide with shock. All her composure was erased - she was actually jumping up and down on the spot. "Oh...my...god!"

"I can't believe it!" gasped Lisa, wondering if what she had just seen was real. Surely not. "Did someone spike the punch?"

"No, I've been drinking it," murmured the dragon vaguely, still staring towards the balcony as if expecting it to vanish in a puff of smoke. "And I'm fine. But oh my god..."

"I know!" she said. "Blue and Toya...no...she detests him. He's a complete...I don't even have a word for it, it's that bad!"

"He's going to eat her alive," Tali said wildly. "That must be it!"

"Hon, I'm starting to think someone did spike the punch," Lisa murmured. She tried to calm down. Had it been Toya and Blue Malefici? Yes. They were soulmates? Yes. She knew that. Blue had told her himself.

It must be the soulmate link.

It had to be.

X - X - X - X - X

Chatoya didn't really know when they had stopped kissing, but they must have, because she could feel the warm breeze on her face again, and the tight curl of his arms about her body, and the way they were pressed together. A strange feeling turned just behind her ribs, as though a hot coal revolved there, and there was an odd hissing in her head.

"What was that in aid of?" she said finally, lips by his ear, though her voice didn't sound quite her own. It was far too breathless.

He did move then, putting her away from him a little. Shocked, she realised his eyes weren't at all blue anymore, but the succulent gold of honey. And there was a look in them that she couldn't quite describe, something between surprise and spite.

"Gratuitous self-indulgence," he answered, and drew his hands up her waist lightly, making her squirm. "I was curious."

Curious. "About what exactly?" she said sharply.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

She could feel the barriers drawing up, each word a brick in them. Inevitable, but somehow painful - part of her yearned to keep the coldness away for another instant, keep away reality because reality was so cold and harsh.

Brick by brick, his hostility locked her back into her safe and secure darkness. When those walls fell, maybe all she saw was the light of her own funeral pyre, but it cast warmth all the same.

The world was so cold.

"Perhaps you're not as much of a fool as I thought. You're afraid," he said, switching subjects like someone else might flip over pages. "Even now."

"Especially now."

Especially now she hadn't resisted him. Killer of her parents and killer of her brother, but when she looked at him, she was seeing something else, something new. Look at his eyes, and she would glimpse them shut, eyelashes fanned over his cheekbones. Gaze at his mouth, and she would feel its imprint.

Damn him.

"It's not easy, is it?" he said, fingers sliding into her hair. He regarded her with a face wholly impassive and all she could think was how that exquisite bone structure had felt to her fingertips, smooth and illicit as ivory. "Am I making it difficult for you, Chatoya Irkil? You'd like to see me gone. Or would you?"

His grip tightened suddenly, and she yelped as he dragged her hair back. The other hand seized her waist and bent her backwards, so he leaned over her.

His stare swallowed her whole.

"You gave into me very easily," he whispered, bringing his head down, down until he could lean his forehead on hers. The tilt of her back pulled her stomach muscles painfully tight, and this close, she could smell his scent, an odd combination of black ice and musk. "Do you honestly think you can handle Pursang?"

Fury rocketed up through her head like a bullet, exploding in words. "I handled you!"

Those heavy eyelids dropped, and his voice poured forth intimacy, a peach-down softness that pierced through her armour as if it didn't even exist. "Oh yes, how very true."

"Stop it!" she snarled, and wriggled free though she knew in truth he was releasing her. "Goddess, what is wrong with you? Don't do this to me, please!"

"Do what?" he inquired, and slid close again to toy with the strap of her dress. She was horrified that though her feet stepped back, her mind resisted. "Witch of mine, why am I always to blame? Which of us here is dressed to...kill?"

Her eyes were vast jungles as she looked at him, jungles bared to the axe.

"If you want to play seductress," he continued, and slid the strap from her shoulder onto her arm, "be prepared for a game that doesn't abide by mere rules."

"I'm not," she said, and drew strength into her voice. His fingers danced on her shoulders until she snapped her hand over his wrist, and regretted it as something like triumph shimmered through his eyes. "I'm not a seductress."

A laugh escaped him like a lover moving under twilight. "No..." He had her backed to the balcony barrier, the cast iron hard and painful at her back. "Seduction requires a certain coldness, and you feel too much."

"Better too much than nothing," she threw at him, hurling words like spears in the hope that one would hit, one would find a gap and sting him.

"Nothing? Do you truly believe that?" The building's light haloed him in gold yet blanketed his face with shadow. "Oh, you disappoint me. You can't deny what you have never understood."

"I can deny you," she hissed, and forced herself to move forward though it meant being not even an inch from him. "And I won't even pretend I understand you at all."

"Have they redefined denial recently?" he drawled, and tilted his head that fraction sideways, that fraction that made her breathe in, feeling an unborn kiss fluttering between them, and try to step back only to find his arms a far sterner barrier than mere iron. "Please, deny me again. If that's your idea of denial, I'm positively desperate to see what punishment might entail."

"Punishment?" She mustered all the scorn she could, and drew herself up in that careless embrace. She hated the secret smile in his eyes, that deep and distant reserve telling her that she could never win. "I wouldn't waste the effort."

"Who says it would be a waste?" he purred, and before she could move, kissed her bare shoulder. The warm, silken sensation of his mouth froze her quite still, and she felt her defiance withering in the face of such helplessness. How could she fight this? How could she hope to defeat this chameleon that switched not colour but emotion?

Moving from her shoulder to her collarbone, and trailing lower. To her throat, surely, and her blood.

Stop him, dear goddess, stop this now. And the words rose like Venus from the foaming waters, sacred and saving, near-silent in this subtle snare.

"Now who's the seducer?"

Before her heart could take another fretful beat, he glided back.

Her feet scuttled around him, and she desperately tied to ignore the casual, derisive way he let his hands drift out, brush her skin just to see her recoil despite the frissons that swelled through her. Amusement curled freely on his mouth, and in the half-lift of one eyebrow.

"True," he assented. His voice lashed around her like a whip. "Perhaps you should be careful, Chatoya Irkil. I will let you play your games. But others will not be so indulgent. Watch the shadows."

She searched his face for any sign of irony.

"I always do now," she said bitterly. "You reminded me that I should be afraid of the dark."

It wasn't until she was halfway down the hallway that she realised he had never answered her question.

X - X - X - X - X

Away from the loudness and the chaos and the music, in the lapping shallows of the lake, a boy sat.

His face was tilted up to the night sky, and his eyes seemed to widen and draw in the stars until they were two orbs of fire, a lost piece of the sun set free at last. The water was black and still as a mirror, and his hands were sunk in it to the elbows, as though he had been melded into this odd looking-glass.

The assassin clung to the tree she held, and watched him with rapt fascination. Her sandy hair hid the lustre of her eyes, in case he should look up from the echoing emptiness of the lake, and her form was easy to hide among the wealth of rushes.

What was he?

Perhaps it roused a glimmer of marvel even in her atrophied heart like a piece of mica catching the light in granite. Perhaps if she had known it was Fireblade, who had crushed lives like sand, she would have feared.

You're so alive, she told him silently. And I am so dead.

But you are ageless and I am young...how can this be? Where did I get lost?

She half-smiled; the question was pointless. She was no longer lost; there was new purpose in her life, purpose that revolved around Blue Malefici, casting his shadow over the world. She, the one person who had stepped forward when the powers that be had sought a slaughterer.

A flare of light snapped her back to the strange boy, the one who had felt as wrong in her head as a drop of oil in water.

He was haloed in thick orange fire. But as she watched, it seemed to spill forth from him, light flowing over his body and into the water. Not understanding any of this - how could fire touch water and not die? - she slithered forward on her stomach.

He was a mere speck in this vast lagoon, yet the water before him was changing, glowing the deep red of hot metal. Then, as if the lake was gasoline and not water, the surface exploded with a soft hiss into an immensity of flames.

She shielded her eyes, and felt smoky heat roll over her flesh. One eyelid opened cautiously to see the boy standing before a blazing sea, a black silhouette on acres and acres of dancing orange.

What on earth-

No, not earth. He was nothing from this world.

She wriggled closer, careful to keep her body screened behind the high rushes, and her mind screened behind subtle shields, shields unnoticeable unless you actively sought them. The flames ran almost up to the waters' edge, and soon she was only metres from them, squirming in the incredible heat.

And then pictures blossomed in the fire. Agape, she cringed back as Blue Malefici appeared in the flames as if he were standing there, sharp blues and indigos against the orange tongues.

"...don't care if you were about to discover the secret of the universe, which incidentally, won't be found in her mouth," he was saying, and now another boy appeared in the picture.

Aspen Martin. The girl felt her eyebrows raise. So he had survived the enclave. He must have been stronger than she had always thought. Even vermin scum like her had been able to see how damaged he had been, running away from that ghastly father that she had only - thankfully - seen from a distance.

"I was enjoying myself," Aspen said shortly, leaning back against what must have been a wall though nothing appeared in the flames bar their two forms, He produced a cigarette. "I am allowed occasionally."

Blue was only watching him with that patient, unreadable look she had seen so often. He was so controlled; every nuance, every gesture was purposeful and thought out. He combined a cold intelligence with a deadly ability to think on his feet, and she liked to think that she had achieved something similar.

"I thought you knew better than to get involved," the vampire said, throwing Aspen a lighter.

Aspen looked uneasily at the lighter - Blue didn't smoke, she remembered - then lit up.

"She's my soulmate," he answered, his odd eyes glittering the same colour as the flames about them; one the smoky blue of the fire's core, the other a citrine yellow. "It's hard not to. And maybe I want to be involved."

"You're a fool then," Blue said, and the slender, mocking smile she knew so well flowed onto his mouth. "She's vermin, Martin, nothing but a fine vintage in a pretty package, and she'll be dust one day."

"Aren't we all?" Then Aspen stopped and squinted at the lamia boy. "Can I smell perfume?"

"Not mine, I'm afraid," he drawled, his voice the purr of the tiger crouched in camouflage, content to watch the antelope move before it but at every moment, that sense that it might flick its striped tail and pounce.

The cigarette dropped unnoticed from Aspen's hand as he stared. "Is she still alive? Who was she?"

"Chatoya Irkil," Blue said casually. Something flashed in his eyes, something entirely inhuman and unpleasant. "Amusing creature. Very...responsive."

"Well, I'll be-"

"I rather think you have been." The swift and venomous words silenced Aspen, a stab to the heart that bled memory rather than blood.

The girl watched Aspen struggle to regain his composure. Clever of you, she thought at Blue's mirage. A neat move. Would I have thought to use it?

"That's not the issue." He was tense now, somehow more vulnerable against Blue's icy composure. But then, wasn't everyone? "I thought you just warned me away from getting involved - since when have you gone in for interpersonal relationships?"

He was still, so supremely still he could have been a sculpture of Michelangelo's. "I am not involved," said Blue serenely, and she thought how neatly he fitted into this world of flames, a personal reminder of hell. "But she is."

Aspen might not have had Blue's disdain, but he was visibly angry. Odd, she thought, so angry over some girl who was clearly nothing.

"She's a good person!" he snapped. "Fine, so she's the only person on this planet who you can't kill - why are so you hellbent on tearing her into shreds? Is it some kind of bizarre love that even emotional screw-ups like me can't understand?"

Blue actually laughed - and the girl drew in breath. He almost never laughed. Not now. When he had been a child, once or twice she had heard that wild sound, but never since he became the monster he was.

Couldn't kill? What was this girl...something powerful, amazing?

"In the immortal words of Tina Turner, what's love got to do with it?"

"She's your soulmate!" Aspen nearly shouted. "Don't you understand how important that is? I don't know what I'd do without Tam-"

"Exactly what you've spent the last five years doing," he cut in. "You wouldn't be wasting your time trying to lead a vermin life."

"Tam is not vermin!"

She thought Aspen actually came close to attacking Blue, but he must have realised how incredibly stupid that would be. "I don't want to talk to you," the odd-eyed lamia boy said, still as afraid as he had been as a child, but somehow stronger for it. "I don't want to hear about you hurting Chatoya Irkil. I don't want any part in it."

"You have no part in it. This is between me and her."

Aspen stared at him. "I'm starting to wish you could kill her," he said shortly. "That would be easier than whatever you have planned."

"Yes..." Blue shrugged slightly, a languid careless motion. "Yes, it would. But where's the joy in that?"

Aspen only shook his head, and walked away. The flames swallowed him: he faded into fire.

Interesting. But why were they being watched? And just who was the boy watching them?

He stood before the fire, a thoughtful, narrow-eyed look upon his face, unaffected by the stifling heat. Not vermin, she was sure now, but what? She had never heard of a power like this that seemed part-witchcraft, yet infinitely more powerful.

Not even dragons had this kind of power, though she had thought at first that was what he was.

The boy clapped his hands twice and the flames vanished. Nothing remained but darkness.

X - X - X - X - X

Chatoya flew down the stairs, searching blindly for her friends. She felt like a dream, ghosting through this all too real world. A dream, with no control, a thing that was only what other people made her.

She found them eventually, deep in discussion, though it didn't seem as casual and friendly as usual. Jepar had a stunned look on his face, his green eyes unnaturally bright in the dim room, while Tali seemed purely furious.

As she approached, the three of them spun round.

"Have you gone mad?" were the first words from Lisa's lips, blazing like a Fury in her bright yellow dress. "What are you doing?"

"W-what?" she said, startled at the anger in her housemate's voice.

"Blue Malefici!" said Tali pointedly, her arms folded. "Have you forgotten that quickly?"

Oh god. They had seen. Chatoya tried to gather her scattered wisps of thoughts, and suddenly the world didn't seem like a dream anymore, but all too real.

"What about him?" she said guardedly.

Jepar's candid stare was harder to meet. He knew her like no one did, and there was bemusement glittering in the core of his gaze. "Lisa and Tali said you were..." A shrug, clearly uncomfortable.

"Playing tonsil tennis." Tali's voice a flat snap. "And it looked like a pretty even match."

Lisa put a calming hand on the dragon's arm, but it did nothing to diminish her concerned expression. "Why were you and he..." Great. She couldn't say it either. "Did he make you?"

He made me want him, Chatoya felt like saying, but the notion made her flush. Had she really? Was she so dreadfully shallow and vapid that she could forget all he was and worse, all he represented?

And she was so, so tempted to lie. It would have been easy to lie, and to blame Blue...but that would have made her like him, twisting the truth to her own ends. So she faced them squarely, despite the flutter in her stomach, and the small knot forming in her throat and told them, "No."

Jepar's blinked, dazed, his pupils vast and lost. She heard Lisa's sharp intake of breath, and only Tali remained unmoved, still cool if exasperated.

"You're being stupid." No compassion in the dragon. "Take it from someone who knows, people like him don't deserve to live."

An image flashed into her head, a boy crucified and silent, locked into his own glacial mind because it was the only sanctuary he had from his own family. Whoever that boy was now, what he had suffered was no less awful.

"Don't be so blind," she said angrily, feeling a gulf widening between them, and powerless to prevent it.

"Are you standing up for him?" a disbelieving Jepar asked. He raked his hands through his hair. "Toya, you know what he's like!"

"Yes, maybe more than any of you. I'm not justifying anything he's done. You think I don't know what he is?" she protested, then stopped. "Why is it such a big deal? I kissed the guy - it was nothing. It was a mistake, a whim, whatever."

"It was Blue," Lisa said, her voice curiously dead. "Have you forgotten Sonj that quickly? Don't you r-remember what he d-did?"

Chatoya was shocked to see tears standing in her eyes.

The made vampire cuffed at her eyes irritably. "Don't you remember what he did to your family?" she said.

"Don't throw that at me!" she bit back before she could stop herself. "Goddess, I don't want to talk about this."

"Well, you're going to have to," Tali declared. Despite the hot-red of her clothes, she had never seemed so cold to Chatoya. Why wouldn't they leave it alone? She didn't even know what she thought or felt, how could she possibly explain it to them?

"It is not your business." She took a deep breath to try and calm herself.

Jepar shook his head, gently, but it did nothing to dull the troubled edge to his words. "It is our business, because you are. We're your friends, Toya, and we can't just watch you jump off a cliff."

"Funny," she said in a strained voice that didn't seem to be hers, as the words themselves didn't, "I thought that was exactly what Tali did when you two first met."

The dragon froze, and Jepar's emerald eyes filled up with anguish that seeped into the air and hung there.

I didn't mean it, she wanted to say, I just need to you to let me deal with this. And she opened her mouth to take back those words, but Tali simply stalked off before she could.

Jepar didn't meet her eyes. "You'd better let her cool down," he warned. "Toya...I know you didn't mean it." His smile wavered, and vanished. The hurt in his face was like a knife to her heart. "I have to go and fulfil my duty as official punching bag."

"Jepar..." she whispered, apologies stuck behind the lump in her throat. How could she have said that?

He brushed by her, his voice rough. "I know. We'll hug it out later."

Just like that, he was gone, leaving behind only her and regret. She turned to Lisa, trying to find the right words.

The vampire shook her head, arms wrapped around herself. "Don't talk to me," Lisa said abruptly. "I'm going home. I just..."

Tears dissolved her voice: she tried to hide it, wiping at her eyes and half-covering her face with her hands. Chatoya had never seen Lisa run from anything, but she ran then, cannoning through the crowds.

She wanted to follow her friend, but she had the feeling she was going to end up in tears too. Lisa hit a tall figure who stopped her - Cougar, looking bemused more than anything as she pushed past him.

And Chatoya was left standing, shocked.

He strode over, looking lean and divine in simple black.

"What's going on?" the vampire said, frowning at her. "I just saw Tali and Jep leave, and Lisa's gone to find Thom so she can get a lift home...why were they all so upset?"

This was Cougar, Cougar who had told her in his shy, gauche and rare way that they were the deepest kind of friend. A friendship soaked in tears and baked in laughter, enduring as stone and adaptable as water. She took a deep breath. He would be angry, but she had seen him angry before

Just not at me, a voice said, but she pushed it aside resolutely.

"I kissed Blue," she said. "Voluntarily."

He reeled.

The sun went supernova in his eyes.

"You bitch," he said in an awful, quiet voice that stunned her to her core. "Oh god, you bitch, how could you?"

The golden light dripped from his eyes, tiny threads of fire moving down his face like the tears of a god, and if she hadn't been so utterly staggered, Chatoya might have seen the vulnerability in his shivering lips, or the horror impaled in his eyes.

As it was, all she saw was the way he stepped back, one hand rising in a warding-off gesture.

"Don't you realise what he is?" he whispered in the same dead and dreadful tone. "He's everything that's wrong in the world, he's not human, he's not right, he's nothing but evil."

She opened her mouth, but he silenced her with a single chop of his hand.

"Was it the soulmate link?" he asked, and she heard the need behind that question. Hope fluttered in his face like a white flag, whipped by the storm.

Tell me it was the soulmate link.

She hesitated. That was all it took. One blink, one breath, one beat - and that flag was ashes, bitter ashes.

"Cougar-" she managed instead, her words almost stolen by the sheer intensity of his reaction. She hadn't realised he hated Blue so much - she hadn't known any of them did. "It was-"

"Rather fun," a smooth, satisfied voice said, and she felt an arm snake around her waist, and a warmth at her back. Her heart burst into furious shards - no, how could he use her like this!

Cougar was frozen, not her snarling angry angel, but a shattered boy with eyes like a dying sun that said nothing, nothing could ever forgive such a betrayal.

Doesn't he look destroyed? Blue inquired, amusement thick as melted chocolate. Oh, witch of mine, you seem to have touched my brother's heart somewhat.

Right now, her hatred of Blue ran like a lode of diamond, deep through her and ageless. She wrenched his hand off in the most painful way she knew, and tried to break at least one finger.

She lifted her eyes to Cougar, praying, hoping beyond hope that he would see...

He shook his head furiously. "Not this," was all he said and for the second time, he ran from her.

But this time, Chatoya followed.

Here it comes again
You raise the bar even higher
I cannot catch my breath
So throw the beauty on the fire...