"I need you to watch me be free, I need a witness," she said, and stood. I followed her with my eyes as she rose. That fire in her eyes went out for a minute as she stared, looked around, looked at the brilliant colors of the sunset. She looked back at the dagger, and then up, and suddenly that flame was restored. It was as if the sparkle of the dagger had spread to her eyes. They were brilliant, more so than before. She took a long slow, slightly shaky breath, and said:

"Nothing you could have said or done, no amount of concern for my well-being could have prevented this. Remember that."

I knew then that my only choice was to watch, that it would only be more painful for her if I interfered.

She continued,"There is life, there is death, and there is eternal freedom. I go for the third choice. I have had life, my memories of it fade. I have had death; one can be dead and walking. I have found how to be free of this death."

She looked again at the dagger, lifted it, and drove it into her breast. It was quick; in, to the hilt, and out. Rivers of blood came from that wound. She fell to her knees; the blood-stained dagger she lifted. "Such beauty is marred," she said. The dagger fell from her hands. She looked up at me, enough for me to see that light extinguished forever, then she collapsed. As her life's blood poured out of her, like the tears from my eyes, I noticed that it was all pooling in one spot. All I could do was watch, there was nothing else. Something spectacular then happened. The pool rose and formed a sphere in the air. And in a bright flash of light, ten times brighter than her eye-fire, the blood transformed into a beatuiful butterfly, crimson and ebony and silver. It flew towards the clouds, into the great beyond. She was finally free, I knew this. She told me.