The little animal should have been soft and fragile, with a tiny heart that beat like a trill, stinking of fear and wildness and giving so easily under Claudia's fingers. The sensation she got instead was fascinating, a buzz that made her so aware of her own veins she might have already bitten into the beast and felt its life flowing into her, and she might have laughed if she found she could move. How curious.

Curious turned very rapidly into awful. With a startling flash, making Claudia wish she could close her eyes, bright like the sun was in her hands, that buzz became the most terrible burning. It was the sun, she was suddenly sure, frozen and helpless as she was, and the time had come that she couldn't hide from it anymore, and her skin was turning to ash on her bones, and there would be nothing left of her.

As all of that power that threatened to tear her apart went flowing out of her body and spreading through the ground, all in an instant that felt like the same long, dreadful minutes that her house had burnt around her and her skin had smoked and her hair seared to her scalp, when it was finally gone she collapsed, mouth open with a scream of horror that was still paralyzed in her throat.