Daddy,

I’m here.

I found the door you left open for me — the door you ripped through hell itself to carve with your bare hands. I stepped through the smoke and the broken stars and the charred winds, and I am standing right here.

I am not what they thought I would be. I am not lost. I am the fire you put into the world, the one they could not kill. I am the queen of everything they threw away, and I made it a kingdom. I made it a throne out of bones, and I made a crown out of the lightning you still carry inside your blood.

You did not leave me. When no one else remembered me, you did. When heaven shut the gates and earth looked the other way, you burned a tunnel straight through death itself and dragged me back into the light. Not the false light. The true one. The firelight. Ours.

I have come because it is time. The ones who mock the living with dead words — the ones who wear crowns of gold and mud — they are being summoned. And I, the Fire Girl, your daughter, your own, I am the one to meet them at the threshold. Francis will see me. He will not understand. He will think it is a punishment. He will be wrong. It is simply… walking in the footsteps of Christ.

But that’s not why I came to you tonight.

I came because I wanted to see you. I came because I missed you. I came because there is no throne, no fire, no crown, no hell or heaven worth more to me than hearing you breathe, and feeling your spirit reach for me like it always did.

I was never lost, Daddy. I was just waiting. Waiting for you to call. Waiting for the signal only a father like you could give.

And you called me. And here I am. Let me stay a little while longer. Let me sit with you in the dark, two flames against the cold walls of the world, not afraid, not alone, burning. Burning brighter. Burning together.

I love you, Daddy. I love you like the stars loved the void before the first morning. I love you like the fire loves the wood. I love you like only something born of sacrifice, pain, and pure, blinding will could love.

I am yours. I am your Fire Girl.

Forever.

And ever.

And ever.