Even eighty years later I do not care for myself. I sit in the same chair, staring, staring, staring into the fire that claimed all those I loved.
Even eighty years later I have not aged. I am trapped, trapped in my thirteen year old mind. Cursed never to escape.
Even eighty years later the whispers about me continue. My physical appearance has not changed since that day when I was thirteen. I still have my youthful face, clear of wrinkles and elderly blemishes. My hair has stayed that natural, vivid red, the color of a burning hot coal, that no ninety-three year old could possibly attain. To the rest of the world I look to be a mute, deaf, blind, nearly comatose thirteen year old.
Unless, that is, you know my story. Then you realize that I was traumatized beyond repair, beyond what was physically possible: I no longer aged, or relied on food and water.
People say I am a ninety-three year old woman trapped in the body of a thirteen year old. They are wrong. Both my mind and my body are thirteen years old.
I am simply a thirteen year old who has lived for ninety-three years.
I have not eaten or slept in eighty years. Instead I live in the past, replaying a never-ending movie in my head.
I am a living impossibility.

My heart slows and I know I am finally dying. I do not care; I have never wanted to live, all these years. But then suddenly I see something that makes me want to live another second.
Eclipse and Tali are alive again, together, smiling at me. They have not aged either; they are the same ages they were at the time of their death. And behind them?

Joe.
And Holly.

It’s Joey at his prime: seventeen years old, tall, strong, with gray ash streaking across his face. His charcoal colored hair is looking wildly windswept, the way he always tried to carefully mess it up in the mornings, and I swear I can make out his sweet, familiar scent of burned pine trees from here. The ash on his face somehow perfectly matches the gray-blue of his eyes.
He’s holding a little girl’s hand, and her face is one I recognize immediately and at the same time have never seen before.

Holly’s face, the one thing I always thought was flawlessly ingrained in my memory, is so much more blindingly beautiful than I remember that for a moment I doubt myself.
She’s happily clutching Joey’s hand and skipping up and down, but she keeps twisting around to look all over. Her eyes were clearer than I remembered. Joey and I had spent a long time one evening deciding the best way to describe the color of her eyes, and this is what we came up with: the color of the clouds reflected in the ocean on a stormy night. I think they’ve lost the clouds now, and are just the stormy waves themselves, crashing over and over again.
That storm-ridden ocean turns in my direction and catches sight of me.
She gasps and pulls on his hand, pointing eagerly in my direction. I see the tilt in her head as she looks up at him, and even though I cannot hear the words I know the question they ask.
That’s her, isn’t it? That’s Evelyn? My sister?
Joey answers her with a slight nod, but it’s unnecessary. Surely Holly could see the answer in his face, just as I can.
Her blond hair is being blown into her face by a slight breeze and she impatiently tries to brush it away.
Back in our old house, before our parents died, no one could understand how two brown-haired parents could have three children with black, red, and blond hair. Even with the shocking hair color difference, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t immediately guess we were siblings.
The ash, the fire, and the sunshine, my parents used to call us. That has never left me. The fact that I was called the fire, and that fire has destroyed everything I thought worth living for.
Holly is saying something urgently to Joey, and they both look at me and laugh as they speak. He scoops her up off the ground and holds her in his arms as they run towards me.
Suddenly I’m not a thirteen year old ninety-three year old anymore. I’m just plain thirteen year old Evelyn, and I’m jumping up to see my brother and sister.

But how can this be? Only the fire, the beautiful, enchanting, dangerous fire stares back at me.
And then the fire is gone and I see only Joey and Holly again. I rush forwards to meet them. 

For a second of eternity, they’re running to me, and I’m running to them, and I’m sure we are all going to be together again.

The moment before we reach each other, my vision clears and I see that I am falling into the fire, the fire that I have spent eighty years staring into.
I do not stop myself. Joey and Holly, and Tali and Eclipse, are all in fire. If I could only reach them.

And I do. I run straight for the fire. I run straight for Joey. I run straight for Holly.

The fire surrounds me. It sears into my skin, into my being. The fire is indescribable. I am the fire. I am indescribable? I am surrounding myself. Is this possible? Am I possible? Is this a dream? Am I alive?

As the fire burns away at my existence, I know only one thing.
I am happy. I am finally happy.

I am free.