The shadows that raced across the square flashed across her face as she raised her damp eyes. And she saw again that the wisps of darkness were not the children of clouds drifting lazily through the sky, but children of a more sinister kind, grey tendrils that had escaped the turbulent pillar of fire and smoke towering over the western corner of the cobblestone courtyard.
The hair ribbon, which had barely contained the flyaway wisps of her hair before, fluttered in the hot air, then fell silently to the stones below.
Again she wished with all of her being, and again time spurned her. The pillar of fire and ash heaved upward into the sky.