This was inspired by a scene in the stigmata, and is kinda a spin off from my story the Kathaerodous. You don't need to have read it, but it will help. I think there's a nice little twist at the end.

Basically, it's death by hanging. It's an image I've had in my head for a while, and I tried to draw it, but as I can't draw it came out looking crappy. I just had tp get it down before my head explodes.

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'Traitor!' screamed the crowd, 'TRRAAAAAAAAAAAAITOR!'

The girl dragged the wire behind her, the heavy, thick, long wire that was to kill her. It dug into her poor, thin, hands as she hopelessly dragged it along the ground, struggling. Some of the crueller of the crowd stepped on the wire so she couldn't drag it She struggled against them, pulling half- heartedly until one of the guards kicked the crowd away from her, and then, whipping her to hurry it up. As the whip lashed against her delicate back, a gasp escaped her beautiful lips.

The crowd mocked and jeered at the woman, who looked like little more than a tramp. But she was a condemned criminal. A heretic. Men, woman, human and non human alike jeered, but there were three children, two boys and a girl, in the crowd who cried. They were her children.

As the woman dragged the wire solemnly up the hill, ignoring the crowd, she held her head up high. The expression on her bruised and battered face was not one of despair, or one of irredeemable sadness. There wasn't even a flicker of hate against the people how deeded her unfit to live. There was just pity and servitude in her broken face, her wonderful purple eyes gleaming with the knowledge that her death was not in vain.

Her face was covered in bruises from where the guards had hit her, playing their sport before the execution, before she was to die. Her arms were covered in cuts from the guards who had jeered at her for calling herself a prophet for the god Geuidun. After slashing at her body, trying to get her to retaliate, they had hit her to see if they could make her cry, strike back, anything. But the woman took it, praying under her breath to her God. They had hit her worse for that.

She wore nothing but a silk white dress. Simple, little more than a sheet with a belt around the middle, and her feet bled from the glass and sharp rock on the road she had trod from the prison, but somehow, even the richest man who had come to see the death of the heretic did not seem as richly clad as her.

As she walked the children chased after her shouting, 'Mave, Mave!' Their word for mother, as if pleading her to stop. She turned around, and with one look from her purple eyes they stopped, quiet, and did not speak. The little girl started to cry, but she gained no comfort from the crowd, who wished only to see her mother's death.

As the woman stepped up to the place of hanging on Marble Hill, she gave her wire to the executioner, and waited gracefully to be strung up like a chicken in a shop window. They exchanged no words, but the executioner tied the wire up, ready for it to be slipped around her head. She stood on the platform, just above the trap door and said nothing as he tied the wires around her body that were to cut it as she felt.

The crowd were ecstatic with joy, shouting, jeering, dancing, chanting obscenities at her, knowing that to kill a mother of three children and god's prophet was right. There were three other prisoners waiting for death. The first, the one next to her was her husband, another prophet of Geuidun, with jet-black hair and golden eyes, gold like the sun at midday. The second was a man with golden hair and eyes as deep as the sea, a man who had once been a Lord, but his devotion to the Prophets had led him to be destitute, less than even the beggars on the streets that died from leprosy. The last was a man who had been accused of collaborating with the prophets, a man who had no name, but was known as Stone, the only human follower they had. He, like the man with the eyes like the sea, had been great once; a king among men, but now was waiting death like a criminal.

The executioner stood before the crowd, and raising his hand caused them to go silent, except for the little girl who cried. By her sobs were lost behind his words. 'Fellow Citizens!' he shouted,' Today marks the death of four heretics against the Lady our Goddess. These evil heretics, Amethyst, Jorvic, Myotisis and Stone, have broken every law of our Lady. They have denied her scriptures, they had said that there was a creator before her; they have called her little more than an Angel. For their crimes against out Lady, they shall be hanged and quartered with extreme pain.'

The crowd rallied again, screaming, shouting gleeful in their death. It was at this point the woman shouted, at the top of her little breath, 'Forgive them Geuidun, for they do not know what they do.'

The man with the golden hair looked at her shamefaced and said, 'I see you children in the crowd Amethyst, would it not be better that they did not watch.'

'I wish them no pain,' she said, 'but they must watch. It is what Geuidun wants.'

Stone, eyes streaming with tears of sorrow said, 'Amethyst, will all our sins be forgiven? I forgive the crowd for what they do because I love Geuidun. I am lucky that my children are older, they know not to watch me die, and that my wife is dead. I wish to meet her again.'

'You Shall Stone.' Said Amethyst, 'for Geuidun knows that you are loyal to him.'

'Amethyst?' asked her husband.

'Yes, Jorvic?'

'I love you.' She did not reply; her eyes said it all.

As he whispered this words hoarsely, the executioner drew a leaver that opened the trap doors. They dropped, but only for a short while. The wire cut into their necks, causing great pain and for their veins to burst. Stone died almost instantly, the wires cutting into his body, the blood oozing. For Myotisis, death was not as easy. He was strangled to death, every second in extreme pain as the wires wrapped around his body drew blood, tricking down his rags and finally dripping slowly, almost seductively on the ground. Jorvic's body went the same way.

But the body of the woman, the mother, the prophet, the maiden, hung their, twisting a little in the gentle breeze, her feet twitching as her choked loudly, the wires cutting into her body. As she hung she whispered, little more than mouthed her last rite prayer. 'Dear Geuidun, for what sins I have committed in live, may I be forgiven as I died before you and for you. May I give my soul to you to look after as my shell dies, dear Geuidun, for what sins I have committed in live, may I be forgiven as I died before you and for you. May I give my soul to you to look after as my shell dies, for what sins I have committed in live, may I be forgiven as I died before you and for you. May I give my soul to you to look after as my shell dies.....'

The Executioner, angry with her, pulled the wires tightly wrapped around her body tight enough that they cut through her flesh, and a tidal wave of blood dripped down her body, coursing down her thin, smooth legs like life- giving water drips down a leaf. She gasped, a sound like a swallow's note, her lungs cut, and her pure, beautiful face in a perpetual expression of grief for the crowd. Dying, in pain and her heart dying from her grief, she blinked. Her long red hair hung down her like the red sanguine that coursed from her body. Her long black lashes blinked again, and small drops of blood fell down her face as she cried silent tears for the world.

The guards, unconvinced of her death, cut her wrists, more blood dripping down like water onto the sandy ground. She gasped out again, merely mouthing the words of her God. The crowd raged. They liked to see a good, slow death. Especially to one like her. She cried her tears of blood, her feet twitched, but the soon stopped as she started to reach death. To make sure she got there, the guards slit her throat. She was dead. The crowd cheered and danced, but soon left as a storm cloud started to appear in the skies.

The only people who stayed behind after the guards had thrown the bodies on the ground to be buried later where the three children of the two prophets. Seeing that their parents were dead, they wailed and cried, covering themselves of what remained of their blood. They lay out the bodies carefully, respectfully and covered each one with three handfuls of dirt. As the children cried a woman came behind them. The woman had long hair, golden like the metal, as thick and dense as bracken and eyes as brown as the bark of the evergreen trees.

As she saw the children performing their pitiful burials, she said to herself, 'who would have thought, that on the very year of 2100, that we would become animals again.'

She held her hands out to the children, and said to them, 'I am a friend of your mother's, of Geuidun, will you come with me?'

They looked at her, and nodded. As she took their hands and walked off into the sunlight, you could almost see a faint pair of wings growing from the woman's back.

'I'm glad you're here,' said the smallest boy, 'I'm glad that you came for us, Angel.'

~*~

This ending probably says more about my view of society at the moment than I wish to go into.

Please, if you're reading this, can you review just to say that you've seen it, even if you don't have anything to say about it? Could you just review to say something like, 'I have read this. I dis/like it' It isn't constructive, but I'd like to know if my summary is attracting people, even if they don't review. Just a little experiment I'm doing.