Just.

It was dark and she was light…much lighter than the dark air pressing on his shoulders. He had always spoken with such conviction, until he heard her voice. Hers shattered his. His words broke before they fled his mouth. But she caught them in her ears and they rested there a while, before swimming through to her mind. It wasn’t the sounds of the words that made them particularly all-consuming. She had heard the words before, spoken them, but it was the look that delivered the words…that irresistible thought-stilling look.

It almost didn’t happen. It was like juggling, only with words. What he was supposed to say, and what would have been conventionally appropriate to say was “Congratulations” or “Kudos” or any other token of praise. He didn’t need to say anything at all. And yet he was compelled to say something, and for reasons unknown to him, it had to be the right something. He had to have the right words. And what he did say...he almost need not have said.

“Though I am not…somehow…in your presence…I am.”

Puzzling words - extensively ambiguous words, words completely absent of, and yet completely electrified with meaning. And she held his stare for some time, more out of paralysis than anything else. He had heard her singing, that alchemy that dazzled and enraptured him. So…what else could there be? He had listened and she had sung straight from her soul, so what was he looking for? Did he need a visual? Could her eyes ever convey it?

And suddenly, for less than a nanosecond, less than was possible to qualify as time…he saw it. And as he saw it, she felt his, their whole lives in motion though they were standing perfectly still. The magic he had longed for…the impossible she believed did not exist. They had it…

…But that’s the tragedy - the life-breaking reality. It was over before it had begun, for that was it, that one moment, the break in the circuit. That was that moment you have all been warned about and conditioned to avoid. That was the moment when two people of our human breed felt too much.

They felt so much…that they both burst into flames.