* Author : Samantha Henderson

* Narrator : C.S.E. Cooney

* Host : Graeme Dunlop

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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Originally featured in the Word Webber Press anthology of 2013, Allegories of the Tarot.

Rated R

L’Etoile Flamboyante

by Samantha Henderson

Last night I dreamed about the Painted Children: the Dragon Leviathan, the Boy made of Horses, and the girl, L’Etoile Flamboyante. In the dream, I was sitting at the edge of the cliff beside the ruins, not far from where I lie now, but I was straight and whole again, the tiger reclining beside me like an outsized housecat. The water at the foot of the cliff glistened in the starlight, and the Children were in a boat, little wider than a rowboat, looking up at me. The girl stretched out her arms, and I shifted as if to rise. The tiger gave me a lazy nudge. Not yet, it said, silently. We are still at the business of dying.