The flare of the struck match shown through her cupped hand, making her fingers glow (alabaster, he thought... rose quartz), revealing in their delicate, venular tracery what he thought might be the path of his life, a course to plot, a way forward, a next step, if only he could decipher its intricate alphabet before it faded away with the dying match, or became transmuted into her first, soft, smoky exhalation.
