Of ember and dust by Anne Liberton
2900 words, ~14 minutes reading time
Issue 10 (Spring 2026)
When the first drop hit the bathtub, it echoed in Ágata’s bones. Source of life, vanquisher of thirst, rescuer of drought—water was magic and empyreal as it licked her skin and snaked down toward the porcelain. Vanquisher of fire too, she must not forget. Her hope lay therein, that this attribute might also bring about regeneration, metamorphosis.
“It won’t hurt,” she assured Patrícia to assure herself. Whenever Ágata glanced at her, insentient in her arms, part of her wondered how Patrícia hadn’t died back in the reserve. The other part predicted that she would now, in a matter of seconds, once her body was placed in the bathtub. Guilt was a woman in her arms, one who looked so much like her girlfriend.
“Are you sure?” Ágata asked the day before, falling back in bed, head immersed in a pillow. She was an ocean of tussled blond curls. Patrícia was washed and ready.
“We do have the same degree, you know. And I actually have a Ph.D. in Animal Biology.”
“I’m working on it!” Her voice muffled from the blankets. They almost swallowed her, selected to cater to Patrícia’s tall frame. Under the warm sheets, it was easy to ignore the pinching and tugging of yesterday’s injury—a deep laceration from a length of rusty barbed wire, the kind she found far too often in protected areas, buried in the muddy grass.
Patrícia giggled, clipping her slick bangs with two barrettes on each side. She abhorred not having bangs, but more so when they draped over her eyes. “Just rest, okay? I’ll tag them and come back. It’ll be quick. They won’t even know it was me who did it.” She poked Ágata’s arm to make her turn and stole a kiss goodbye.
Ágata beamed, life was so easy with Patrícia. The bad times, even. Patrícia had tended to the wound, providing pristine first aid to stop the bleeding before they rushed to the hospital for a shot and stitches. There was still work to be done, so instead of slumbering away the pain with Ágata, Patrícia needed to tag the capybaras Ágata had missed, so their research could carry on.
Ágata should rephrase that: despite the pain, there were no true bad times with Patrícia.
The reserve was on fire.
Ágata first discovered it on the news, abrupt that it was, flipping through commercials and telenovellas. The reporter called it a coordinated affair, the firebombing carried out within twenty other protected ecological areas throughout the country.
Live newsfeeds showcased tall walls of inferno that engulfed trees, reducing fauna to ashes. Patrícia wasn’t picking up, wasn’t answering the volumes of texts Ágata had sent. Patrícia still didn’t answer when the moon shot up in the sky, nor when the sun took its place, leaving Ágata sitting on their bed, the flesh around the stitches swelling.
Midafternoon, Ágata awoke to her own ringtone. She ignored the pain from the bandages and lunged for the device hidden in the sheets. It wasn’t Patrícia, but Thayla, her advisor.
“You need to come down immediately,” Thayla said, barreling over politeness. “We found Patrícia.”
“What? Is she hurt? Let me talk to her…”
“You can’t.”
Ágata would only understand the remainder of the conversation after she went to the lab.
The Patrícia in the laboratory did not stir upon seeing her. She did not utter a word, or a breath, hands arranged carefully by her sides, legs stretched along the gurney. Perhaps she could not utter anything, lips petrified. Her entire body radiated stiffness, from the gray hues that replaced the original pale tones to the golden veins visible through the skin. The veins sprouted from absurd locations, ornamental instead of practical. Both her eyes were open, dark voids as devoid of pupils and irises as they were of warmth, staring at the ceiling and never blinking. Her hair—the clips lost along with her clothes—was molded to her skull and neck as one entity. Ágata’s breath caught at the sight of the bangs grazing her eyes. She then leaned in, crooning “Morning, Pati…” close to Patrícia’s ear, mirroring how their last morning had started.
No one surprised her with a kiss. No one moved.
Ágata caressed her forehead, fingers failing to brush back her hair. Patrícia was a doll, a statue sculpted in veined marble by a deft artist.
“And the vitals are normal…” she said, gazing at the electrodes on Patrícia’s chest. The waveforms flickering on the screen were the only indication she was even alive. That and the slight warmth radiating from her, akin to that of an object left for a while in the sun. “The heart, at least.”
“Since the beginning, yes. We found her in a dome,” Thayla told her. “A soot dome. Quite soft. Didn’t take much to tear it apart. Most of its membrane was made of salt.”
“Salt?”
Thayla nodded. “There was a lot of salt on the ground after the fire, mixed with soil. We suspect one of Perez’s jagunços started it, but no one would risk a guess about where that came from. It will be a pain if we hope the flora to grow again…”
“Did you call the police?”
“And told them about the fire. Not about her.”
The nature reserve neighbored a wide corn farm. Albeit illegal, it was not uncommon, after crop season, to see their owners scorching the land to start over the following year. It did not matter what else the flames caught during the process. While Ágata was no stranger to moving research locations due to this, in recent years, the burnings had become more frequent. Twenty areas at once this time, if she recalled the news correctly, which was rather extreme.
“Do you think it will make any difference? The police,” Ágata asked, hands in her pockets to hide a tremor. She both long to stroke Patrícia until she brushed those bangs away from her face and never touch that marble skin again. She could not bear to look at her. “Perez has been fined twice already.”
“I’ll tag them and come back,” Patrícia had said. “They won’t even know it was me.”
But it had been her. And now it barely was.
“And four times last year. Three before that,” Thayla noted. “Money doesn’t stop them. But fire does stop us. Although, even without it, Patrícia would have halted our efforts anyway. This takes precedence.”
Ágata disliked the gleam in her eyes. “You’re not going to study her.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her tone, however, warned it best to remain on guard. “I wish to care for her. We have a hospital at our disposal, a trustworthy staff. Patrícia should stay here until we find out more about her condition.”
They discussed details and, in the end, Ágata managed to move her girlfriend to a proper room at the hospital. Samples and pictures of Patrícia’s nude and still body had already been taken prior to Ágata’s arrival.
Now they sat on the floor by the hospital bathtub, Patrícia in her arms, unchanged, unmoving. No one in the lab had dared to clean her in any way, save for a few moist wipes, which had no effect to wash the greyness from her skin. Perhaps immersion would yield a better result, although as far as Ágata could see, Patrícia did not look particularly dirty from soot, salt or otherwise. She did not look like Patrícia either, but Ágata decided not to let her mind linger on that.
Immersion was a terrible idea. Ágata convinced herself everything was fine while she filled the bathtub (it won’t hurt it won’t hurt it won’t hurt), for water was life, it quenched blazes. It ought to help.
Once it grazed Patrícia’s skin, it was over.
When skin met water, it smoked and foamed, like a torch drowned in a barrel. Panic paralyzed Ágata, terrified she was melting her girlfriend. Smoke cleared and, beneath the surface of the water, Patrícia remained gray and veiny as ever, fog coiling around her. No melting had ensued. Patrícia never moved. She still didn’t while being submerged, hips, arms, shoulders. Not the head—for some unspeakable reason, Ágata kept it out of the water, lest Patrícia would drown. She ignored the lack of movement in Patrícia’s chest or her marble-shut nostrils; Ágata preferred not to lose sight of those eyes, fixated on her, seeing nothing, not her worry nor her love as she lathered limb after limb in quiet tenderness.
“Come back to me,” her mind echoed, throat cinched till no words took shape. “Don’t leave me like this.”
“It should have been me in that reserve” was what she managed to say when guilt outweighed love. “Me in your arms.”
Patrícia would have made this easier too, she was sure of it. She would have joked about it, trampled over Thayla to lead that research, discovered whatever had transpired in the reserve and fixed it. To Ágata, there remained but rumination and dirge.
At night, Ágata still had glimpses of Patrícia, inert in her arms, their eyes locked as if trading secrets, not emptiness. She washed Patrícia with care, warning her before progressing to each limb, and her skin felt delicate and polished, like porcelain. It carried a faint glow now, dressed beside her in hospital attire, covered by a fluffy blanket on the recliner bed. The scene itself read as bizarre, a doll posing as human by her right, where her girlfriend used to be, eyes open and black and focused on nowhere. The sharp beep of the heart monitor brought her sole comfort.
Ágata pictured them at home, their cozy corner of the planet, instead of this sterile place where other people would inevitably come to study Patrícia and prod at her. Lights out, pale arm against her tanned one, both lying in their pajamas like nothing had changed.
It felt wrong. Tainted.
Chest heavy, Ágata realized she wouldn’t want to sleep next to a sculpted version of her girlfriend. It made her feel like a pervert. Worse: it made it abundantly clear that things had indeed changed, that Patrícia was probably gone and she refused to accept it. Probably.
She faced away from the bed and succumbed to exhaustion. Ágata dreamed of sex dolls on sculpted beds. The cushioned upholstery chilled her back and she jumped, half awake, freezing as she slid halfway down the armchair. That is, until she realized the room was actually burning. Flames licked the drawn curtains by Patrícia’s bed.
The oppressing heat of the fire struck Ágata in waves and she coughed, realizing smoke billowed toward the ceiling, nesting around the lamp with nowhere else to go. Had the dream not awoken her, she might not have at all.
In her bed, Patrícia remained gray, insentient and prepared to combust along the furniture.
“Pati?” Ágata tugged at her arm, dead cold against her fingers. Would a miracle ever manifest, this was the moment for it. Patrícia would suddenly wake up from that stupor and spring into action. They would escape together.
Ágata hesitated.
Curses swallowed her brain as she crawled on the bed to pull the electrodes and drag her girlfriend to the armchair. A doll did not weigh much and neither did their blazing blankets, which came along. Tossing them away evoked a coughing fit and a few whimpers due to a scorched hand. Ágata’s leg bandages drenched in red once again, those stitches disapproving of her new routine.
Ágata had just placed a hand on the bandages to stop the bleeding when she spotted black stains on her other leg. Soot. Or…
Upon touching the ash, her skin caved in. It crumbled into cinders underneath her fingers, dark gray and white, a hole in its place. The skin was gone. The flesh was gone. Ágata felt herself scream, lips ajar, yet silent. Then she got a grip—they could afford no hesitation. There would be no miracles.
She leaned toward Patrícia and cradled her, one arm on her back, the other beneath her knees. Her legs buckled, stitches barely hanging on, the other thigh with an open hole. Their eyes locked, brown on pitch black, and instead of lifting her inside a hospital room, Ágata was swept into the nowhere.
Night morphed into daylight. Ágata stood at the edge of the nature reserve. A white pickup truck was parked nearby, dull knives, junk and boxes in the trunk. A man in rundown clothes was bent over a few meters from it, skin tanned from hours working under the scorching sun, body strong and built through manual labor. One of Perez’s henchmen, a jagunço. Ágata knew it before seeing the lighter in his hand, before watching as he tried to set fire to patches of high grass. It took a few tries for it to catch, flames nipping at his hills and poisoning the air with smoke. He stumbled back to his truck, cursing, and drove away.
Daylight vanished. She still followed the white truck, this time parked in front of a hospital. The one she and Patrícia were currently in. The jagunço watched the building in silence, lighter rolling in his hand.
Nothing moved for a while, until one of the windows on the second floor—their floor—began to gleam softly. It pulsated, swallowing the adjacent windows, the entire wall. Light expanded to the whole building, encompassed her line of sight, and Ágata was whisked to another place.
It was a wide living room she had never seen before. Barely lit, devoid of people, it housed a fur rug, a jaguar, carpeting a leather couch and a throne chair. The green marble floor sucked the warmth from her feet. The walls oscillated, frothy, painted in off-white and adorned with plaster. Day or night, she could not tell, but she had had enough.
“Take me back. Patrícia, is this you?” She addressed no one. “Is this supposed to help you?” Ágata sighed, feeling silly. “Pati?”
A door opened and a tall, fat man of about fifty, with chestnut hair falling over his shoulders, walked in. Fernão Perez. He wore a navy blue robe and shuffled toward a display cabinet, grabbing a bottle of whiskey and a glass, and poured himself a drink before sinking into the throne chair. His hands were whiter than his face, sunspot-free, a sign he wore gloves while on the field. He hoisted his phone from a pocket of the robe, checking it briefly.
Despite facing the back of the device, Ágata knew what he was reading, some messages in a group chat that consisted largely of farmers. Same instructions as before. Same timeframes. Twice as large. Don’t forget to salt the land after.
Ágata pursed her lips. She had stated that fines stopped no one.
Satisfied, Perez put his phone away and took a sip. His back had barely touched the upholstery when he clasped his throat. He spit. Then caught fire.
Ágata didn’t scream; yellow and orange reflected in her eyes, she watched him flap his arms, roll on the floor, on the jaguar rug, a silly attempt at extinguishing the flames. The dead jaguar embraced the blaze and expanded it, until it licked the couch, the furniture. The robe disintegrated, blisters formed on his limbs, the stench of burnt hair invaded Ágata’s nostrils. Servants and family dashed through the door when Perez knocked over the whiskey bottle, feeding the inferno further. Someone else screamed. The heat was unbearable. Ágata felt it sear into her bones.
Swiftly as he had been ignited, he was extinguished. The fire in the living room disappeared, absorbed by the ground, by the air itself. The bystanders close to her heaved. Rug, throne chair, display cabinet; all ruined. It was the man in the center, however, who caused the most discomfort. Perez had not been reduced to ashes or a mishap corpse molded from burns: in his place, now lay a white statue of someone cowering, screaming in intolerable pain.
One of the women, Ágata presumed his wife, crouched before the statue. When her finger grazed his face, he crumbled to thin white sand and a thick cloud of smoke.
“Salt”, Ágata realized, the taste flooding her mouth. “A statue of salt…"
A jolt pushed her back to reality and the hospital room, still perspiring and struggling to breathe under the scalding air. The fire set in their room by the jagunço had not yielded while Patrícia guided her through Perez’s home. It reached both of them, besieged them, poisoned the porcelain of Patrícia’s skin with black patches that shattered upon touch, devouring Ágata’s flesh with a hunger of an entity whose sole purpose was sheer destruction.
Hand trembling, Ágata prodded at one of the patches on Patrícia’s skin. It sank in, like her own thigh earlier. She brought the remnants to her mouth.
Salt. Hers must taste the same.
She heard no noise from the door. Should a doctor come, a nurse, Ágata was not sure they could be saved. She wondered if Patrícia wished for them to perish together. If that had already been determined once she was returned from the nature reserve, gray and glowing.
There wasn’t any pain when the flames engulfed them. Somehow, that had been warranted by her girlfriend, as had the cold stroke Ágata felt, which woke her to see the fire and understand what Patrícia had done. Life was indeed easy with Patrícia. Life. Perhaps death as well.
Together, then.
Ágata embraced Patrícia. She closed her eyes, deaf to the sizzling of the flames. And they burned.
