What's funny is that this is an almost perfect environment for memorization. She has no body. She has no weight. She cannot shift or wiggle or speak or do any other stupid thing that could mess her up, so all that's left is just a mind in a world of perfect rhythm and glass. The vibrations are just the phrase moving through her consciousness, the tempo is high but the phrase this time is so simple it's almost

I
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G.

Breath. Breath. Breath without breathing. 

Pain. Pain. Pain without feeling. 

The shape of her body is defined by scalding drips. She is not Madeleine. She is a constellation. 

Smelling vaguely of Yirgacheffe. 

It is the kind of hot that should scar her. 

It is the kind of pain that should break her. 

She is a body of stars trapped inside a telescope, a spine and a beating heart with limbs that are only theoretical and invisible hair that drifts toward the floor with a soft pull like a lover's hand around her skull. The nebula is crackling with low heat and kinetic energy and her sweat is colder than ice and it hurts much sharper than it should because it's healing straight away but then it sizzles and the syncopation and 

D
  R
    I
      P

She is defined anew. The pattern changes. Same as the marker, the burst and the wet and then the lingering evaporation. A dress designed in coffee. A hideous waste she cannot scream about. A smell that is frenzying and soothing in the same exhausted thought and Autumn Wolves C█N'T Won't C████s.

Madeleine.

[center]Madeleine.[/center]

[right]Madeleine.[/right]

Madeleine Cross. 

[center]That's her name.[/center]

That is the spell: Pain is what happens to her. She [i]is[/i].

So. Again.

Autumn. Wolves. Can't. Won't. CH♦RUS.

...That was one of the stars, wasn't it? 

Maybe she clenches her teeth. Maybe she hisses. Maybe she is still breathing. But she is, at least, Madeleine Cross. So even if this is ultimately beyond her, [s]she tries.[/s]