//------------------------------//
// Verse 4: Kveikur 
// Story: Incandescent 
// by Seer 
//------------------------------//

My blood has always run rather hot. 

And yet right now, I am sweating. 

No, right now I am coming apart. 

No, right now I am catching fire. 

Because I am but one pony in a sea of faces and she is up there, commanding all of us. And we are distant stars eclipsed by the sun. And yet through so much of it, I watch the crowd. I watch with amusement how they stammer, how they gawp in utter disbelief that fire can be made flesh as she has been. 

And when her eyes meet mine, in those flashes she needs to lean and I am here to be leant on, she smirks. Something playful and secret and sultry and only for me. That none of these other fools, who are even more blinded by those lights than someone who has touched the sun, could ever understand.

She knows what I do at times like this, she knows how I watch and laugh inwardly. At how they try to fathom perfection that even I cannot fathom after touching and kissing and being burnt by it. Because though I know I am a mere mortal, and she is a goddess, I still spent my life jealously hoarding away light and heat and bright things, and I make no plans to change now. 

Because I might be a simple, mortal mare who stole fire from the heavens, but that fire is my fire, and that goddess is my goddess, and when she is done we all stand in rapturous applause. 

When she leaves that stage, and parts the crowd like the sea on her way to find the only mortal that has come close to withstanding her shine, I simply stand and hope I can be her beacon. But, of course, she can always find me. 

“How was it then, darling? I have to admit, I felt like I was going to die up there! I guess everyone feels like that on their first catwalk in Canterlot, though!” she says, and I am at once enraptured by the music of her voice, which is purer and more harmonious than the finest symphony, “You couldn’t tell how nervous I was, could you?” 

“You were perfect, Rarity,” I respond, and lean down to capture those lips in mine. 

And though it burns me, it’s a willing burn. 

“Celestia,” she giggles, and I melt, once we part, “Me, kissing the princess in public like this? What will the papers say?” 

“Let them look,” I reply, gasping, drunk on the scent of her perfume and the hitch in her breath that tells me I might just be able to ignite her back a fraction of how she ignites me, “They wouldn’t understand anyway.” 

She smirks, and leans back in, and she burns away every part of me but my love for her and my worship and reverence for the sun. And though the mortals might have stared, I did not care for them. 

I only cared to be the one mortal lucky enough to have gotten close to truly fathoming the divine, if only for a second.