The Taste did not release Liahra, even after she had just brutally killed her dog.
There was no moment of reprieve; there could never be any moment of rest as long as the Taste had taken hold of a person.
She wanted to collapse and weep and return back to the woman that she was earlier before this nightmare began, but the Taste had taken hold of her, and her body was no longer her own, only her mind was left to be a witness.
Her body, walking, took her to her apartment, and her hands, in her apartment, took out the photographs of her mother, who had died eleven years ago, and which she kept on her dresser.
Slowly, as if relishing every moment, her hands burned the photographs in the kitchen sink, one by one, and her face throughout watched the photographs burn with the same pleasant smile.
These photographs were her most cherished possession; they were all the memories she had of her mother, and they were all gone.
