'She put her hands deeply into the human ashes, and these ashes were cold and grainy and dead. She flicked her tongue. She often did this before making a sparky statement. She flicked her tongue again, and there was genuine, Holy Ghost fire playing about it. She scooped up ashes with her tangled and tense and electric fingers and put them to her mouth. They flamed.
Then she cascaded the handsful of flame over her head and face and arms, and seemed unburned by them. They were garish, tumbling, orange flames.'
-R. A. Lafferty,
From the Thunder Colt's Mouth (collected in
In the Wake of Man: A Science Fiction Triad, 1975, along with the novellas
Tracking Song by Gene Wolfe and
The Search for Man by Walter Moudy)
