Solenne Ashcourt

Solenne Ashcourt kept a court inside a volcano, and every guest who stayed the night was in love with her by morning. That was the trouble. Whatever she loved caught fire.

She did not mourn the ones who burned, because she could raise them again from the ash, whole and smiling. The court records say each one came back a little less himself. A poet returned without his poems. A general returned without his name.

Her steward, the last to keep any account of her, wrote that she was never cruel and never sorry. She simply preferred things new. When the volcano finally went quiet, the court was full of guests who had all been raised a dozen times, and none of them could remember why they had come.