She saw white stone—miles and miles of it, and she heard a pulse—she felt the pulse. It was hot. Deep fractures in the rock screamed with superheated water, and as she looked deeper the heat intensified and the white rock acquired a glow around the cracks.
She followed the fractures upward and upward for miles, until she broke out into a cold darkness. She saw the face of the rock as the stars began to appear one by one. The face of the rock the face of a woman—no, it was her face—and she was suddenly beautiful, even as bald stone. It was asleep. She floated upward in the air before it. She heard the steam whistling, and looked down to see tiny, capillary geysers spraying out of her breast.
The light intensified. She looked up to see a dawn wrapped around the crown of the stone head, and a blinding daystar broke over the horizon. Clouds gathered around the head, clinging to it like the hair of a world. The clouds darkened as they thickened, and just as the clouds seemed about to obscure the sun they began to boil and crack. Lightning bolts wrapped the head like silver hair, and her shoulders ignited, the flames blowing from right to left and climbing the leeward side of the head, up to the crown, and nearly licking the sun. The distant stars still shone above the sun, clouds, lightning, and fire. The stone face began to subtly crack and heave. The tiny geysers, like eyelashes, began to arc around the covered rises of her eyes. The stone eyelids began to lift.