Sinners to the pyre

The fire she is building is immense.

Her parents’ fire bowl sits where it has always sat, a medium iron thing meant for relaxed evenings by the shed: a couple of logs, a bottle of something, maybe a bag of marshmallows if anyone remembered. Sandra has looked at that modest intention and decided it is not enough. She is in the garden in one of your shirts and very little else, building a systematic pyre that would make more sense if she were disposing of a person instead of four blister packs of pills.

Lint first. Then dry grass. Then a lattice of sticks she keeps adjusting with the focus of someone defusing a bomb. Coals in a ring. Logs stacked so the air can move. She talks to herself while she works, delighted, occasionally glancing at you to make sure you are watching the crime.

“Hold that. No, that one. The split one. Yes.”

You do not stop her. You are a fondly smiling accomplice, ferrying material from the shed and the kindling box and the edge of the lawn, handing her whatever she points at without once suggesting that a metal bowl and a match would have done the job. Her childish energy is too good to interrupt. She has not looked this purely entertained by a project since she was twelve and decided the backyard needed a “fort” that was mostly leaning chairs and a bedsheet.

Then she produces the crucifix.

It is self-made, obviously, two pieces of scrap wood she has bound and then decided binding is not theatrical enough. She nails the tablet racks to the cross with a delight that should probably worry you and instead only makes your chest feel warm. Four little plastic cards, pierced and displayed, held up in the centre of the pyre like a warning to the concept of caution itself.

“Ceremonial,”
she says, very seriously, and then ruins the seriousness by giggling when one nail goes in crooked.

You keep handing her things.

The splinters arrive when she is forcing the last arm of the cross into place. She hisses, shakes her hand, and for a second you see the old version of her flicker across her face: the tomboy who would have laughed it off, hidden the wince, and dug the wood out with her own teeth if she had to. That girl is still in there. She just does not get first bid anymore.

Sandra turns to you instead.

The change is immediate and total. The hammer goes down. The pyre is forgotten. She comes across the grass with her hand held out like an offering, bottom lip already pushing forward, eyes big in a way she would have denied under oath a month ago.

“It hurts,”
she says, which is not a report so much as a request.
“Can you…? Please?”

You sit her on the edge of the shed step and take her hand.

There are three splinters, none of them dramatic, all of them treated like emergencies because she has decided you are the person who does this now. You work them out carefully, one by one, while she watches your face instead of her palm. She does not tough it out. She makes small sounds. She leans her shoulder into yours. When the last sliver of wood comes free she does not pull her hand back and wipe it on her shirt like the old Sandra would have. She leaves it in your grip and waits to be told she is brave.

“There,”
you say.
“Criminal can return to the scene.”

She inspects the tiny red marks as if they are medals, then bumps her forehead against yours.
“You have to kiss it. That’s the rule now.”

You kiss the heel of her thumb. She lights up like you have performed surgery.

Then she is back at the pyre, slightly more careful with the wood, slightly more likely to glance over her shoulder to check you are still her audience. The crucifix stands in the centre, pills nailed in place, lint and grass and coals waiting for a match. The fire bowl was never designed for this much personality. The garden looks like a very small, very happy heretic is about to hold mass.

You love seeing that the energy you fell in love with has not changed in the slightest.

Sandra bounces around the fire bowl like the project is a birthday. She stacks, adjusts, runs to the shed, runs back, talks to the pyre as if it can hear her. Watching her build a doom-pile with that much delight could become one of your favourite pastimes from now on. It would be wholesome on its own. It is not on its own.

She is in one of your shirts.

Only one of your shirts.

Every time she stacks something high or bends over the workbench the hem rides up and you get her bare ass, then a brief, unceremonious flash of her cunt, then the shirt falling back like nothing happened. She is not even trying to seduce you. That is the part that makes your pants tight in a way that feels slightly illegal. If she were putting on a show you could file it under the usual chaos. This is just Sandra working, unselfconscious, bottomless under your clothes, and your body has decided that is worse.

She screams when the fire takes.

It is a delighted, bottomless-pyromaniac scream. She dumped half a bottle of spiritus onto the stack with the confidence of someone who has never respected a warning label, and the bowl answers at once. Flame punches up through the lint and grass and coal. The plastic trays on the crucifix begin to bend and twist immediately, blister packs warping, foil going dull, the little theatrical execution she built starting to slump in the heat.

You step in behind her while she is still bouncing on her toes and wrap your arms around that energetic form. Your mouth finds the side of her neck. The question comes out soft against her skin.

“Feel the burden lift?” You do not get an answer in words.

What you get is her naked ass and pussy already grinding back against your crotch, shirt riding up because she has decided the ceremony is over and the next part of the ritual is you. She bites her lip, glances at the twisting plastic in the fire, and starts dragging your sweatpants down with both hands like that was always the second half of burning the pills.

The garden smells like spiritus and melting blister pack. The shirt is the only decent thing left on her. Your cock is already filling against the wet heat of her as she works the waistband down, still watching the fire with bright, unrepentant eyes.