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Smoke curled above the towers that used to spell safety, and Ciri wanted to cry.
She’d watched the Nilfgaardian man loose an arrow into the back of Laszlo, so eager to protect her - he’d died for her. She could still feel his bright eyes burning into her own.
He’d died for her.
She’d lost Eist, Grandmother, Mousesack - but Laszlo, Laszlo had died because of her. Because he was with her. Because he’d been charged to protect her.
Smoke curled above the towers that used to spell safety, and all that Ciri had ever known came crumbling down around her - all she could to was watch, really, as the story that was life as she knew it came to a close.
The clearing was thick with cloying, rusted stench of old blood.
It was the kind that lingered at the back of your throat, that nestled there and threatened to make you choke on it, long after it had been spilt. It was a smell that Geralt was intimately familiar with, now, given his line of work. Necrophages and wraith and vampires and kikimoras, and all other kinds of beasts besides, wore the stench like a shroud around them, a kind of aura signifying their presence.
Sometimes it clung to Geralt himself, worming its way under his skin and clinging there until he wanted nothing more than to scratch it all off.
It was particularly strong, here, almost dampening the natural, soft scent of wood, earth and morning dew that the forest usually harboured, and he could see the pale red stains soaked into tree stumps and trunks still, remnants of the loss of life from- well, weeks ago, it had to be.
Whatever happened here had to have been brutal.
The blood was human, too, there was no mistaking it - and yet, despite the sheer amounts of it, there were no claw-marks, no tracks, not a trace of any creature that could have done this, and Geralt was intimately acquainted with the signs of such. No, the trees - save the stains that had seeped into them a short eternity ago - were intact, the frost on the forest floor perfectly crystallised over scarcely disturbed ground.
This had been a murder.
It had been a murder, but not a crime of opportunity, people generally didn’t end up bleeding someone dry when that was the case - someone had planned this.
Geralt inhaled sharply, as a picture of what must have occurred to create the scene he now saw before him formed in his mind.
The poor sod.
It was all so deceptively calm, but the screams that must have once rung out here were echoing in the back of his head, which didn’t help at all-
“Are you investigating, sir?”
Geralt spun round.
The source of the query was a girl, not more than fourteen or fifteen summers, she couldn’t have been.
He hadn’t heard her approach.
She was clad in a dirtied, almost threadbare cloak, white knuckles just visible below the sleeves, and she seemed... cold. Her face was pale, just skin and bone - she looked like she hadn’t known warmth in a decade. Scuffed boots adorned her feet, and they’d been good boots once, but the girl seemed to have well and truly worn them down.
Geralt blinked at her.
“I’m a witcher. Murder’s not my wheelhouse.”
“Oh.”
The girl blinked up at him, looking rather crestfallen, and Geralt felt a pang in his chest.
“It’s just,” she continued, scuffing her heel against the floor, “nobody else has even come out here. They’re scared to.”
Geralt kneeled against the copper-stained tree stump. The stain was darkest in the middle, incongruous with a splatter - congruous with a bloodied item set down for quite a while. “But you aren’t?”
The girl shrugged. “They only come when the moon’s new, and it’s not new for another three days.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s not very hard to notice.”
There was a note of derision in her voice, and Geralt raised an eyebrow, memories of a girl called Marilka, who killed dogs for mages, drifting to the forefront. Children were so peculiar, sometimes.
He examined the stains again. New moon.... That would make the stains just over three weeks old.
It tracked.
“Are you going to investigate?” the girl asked, with just enough hope in her voice to tug at the strings of Geralt’s bleeding heart.
“Why do you care?”
The girl hesitated, and scuffed her foot against the ground again. “I just don’t think it’s right. That nobody cares. They killed someone.”
“And who’s ‘they’, then?”
The girl stared up at him, glittering, pale-eyed gaze boring into him.
“The fae death cult.”
Geralt sighed.
“Look, kid, I don’t know about that-” and the glare that was shot his way was almost palpable in its sharpness- “but I need more information if I’m to investigate properly, alright? So, I’ll ask around in the village.”
“They won’t know more than I do.”
“They’ll have clues,” Geralt said, patiently.
“I have clues!”
“You told me that a fae death cult killed someone.”
A petulant stomp of a foot - a quieter stomp than any that Geralt had ever heard, though he doubted that that was the intention - answered him.
“I know what happened!”
“I’m sure you do,” he said, as gently as he could. “But you want me to investigate, correct? I’m a witcher. I investigate a lot, and I know what the best procedure is, okay?”
The girl opened her mouth to retort, before seemingly reconsidering, and closing it.
“Okay.’
The nearby village of Cyfle - the one that Geralt had been aiming to make it to, before he’d followed the scent of the blood and taken a detour to the clearing - seemed like the next logical stop, given that the scene itself was a dead end, any identifying scents having long since dissipated, any further clues lost to the wind and the rain.
If only the girl could see that, too. She seemed to have a less-than-optimistic outlook on the situation, given that she’d been pulling dissatisfied faces at Geralt’s back as they made their way towards the village, Roach walking along comfortably beside them.
Were Geralt a tad more callous, he’d think that the girl was deliberately trying to hinder his investigation, but- children were an odd bunch, didn’t have the kind of perspective those older tended to have.
It was fine.
The frosted forest path was undisturbed - clearly, no villager had trekked it in some time. It was a curious thing - what path, then, did the girl take?
But, there was no time to dwell on idle thoughts. Geralt focused instead on keeping an eye out for any tell-tale clues to unravel the mystery, any signs of disturbance, as they walked.
The forest looked eerily untouched.
“You won’t find anything,” the girl said, for the eighth time. “They don’t know anything. They think it’s just dumb stories, and they won’t believe anyone who says otherwise.”
“How do you know that?” Geralt asked. “You from around here?”
The girl scoffed. “This shithole? No way. But it’s closest to where they killed- someone, so I came and asked for help.”
“What did they say?”
“The innkeep said I was disturbing his job, the butcher said I should go ask someone who knew about more creatures than just what they killed for food, the farmer’s wife just told me not to go in the forest at night if I’m so scared, and the farmer told me to fuck off.”
Geralt raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t they have any corroborating experiences?”
“I don’t know! They wouldn’t tell me anything. I’m not from around here, see, so nobody cares.”
A frown. “Travelling alone?”
“Obviously,” the girl said, her frown becoming less pronounced. “But I can- I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can,” Geralt said. “Does the village have an alderman?”
“What’s an alderman?”
“A municipal leader. In charge of things such as making sure the witcher the town needs gets the contract done.”
The girl hummed. “That’s very specific.”
“I’m sure they do other things as well, but I’m not very involved in village politics.”
A snort of amused laughter left the girl, and Geralt tried not to let his self-satisfaction show on his face.
Gods, he was so easy to please, if a strange child laughing at one of his poor jokes would do it.
The village was, evidently, a fair bit closer than Geralt had expected, given that it soon began to show behind the horizon, the trees thinning and being replaced with arable farmland far sooner than Geralt had expected it to.
It was convenient, at least.
Cyfle did, in fact, have an alderman, who Geralt wasted no time locating, the girl following close behind him, and he knocked steadfastly on the door of the house that proclaimed to house him.
The scraping of a chair could be heard from within, and then footsteps, as the alderman came up to the door and opened it.
He was a lean man, with a friendly-looking face, contrasted only by his immediately apparent sour demeanour, as his expression visibly became pinched upon regarding Geralt.
“Ah... witcher. We have no contracts for you, you best be on your way.”
The alderman moved to shut the door, but Geralt was faster, grabbing the side before he could properly pull it shut, and pushing it wide open again.
“I’m not here for a contract. I’ve already been hired, I only want to talk about any information you might have about my current contract.”
Snorting to himself, the alderman chuckled, an overdone parody of amusement. “Then why don’t you ask the townsfolk of the village that hired you? Why must you bother the good people of Cyfle? Who hired you, anyways, the airheaded little buggers over in Maddensworth?”
The girl took the opportunity to make herself known, stepping into view from behind Geralt and clearing her throat.
“Actually, it was me. It’s about the murder, that happened in the-”
“You,” the alderman snarled, fixing the girl with an angry glare. “I’ve been hearing complaints about you, skipping into the village and bothering everyone with your foolish tales. Count yourself lucky I don’t throw you in the stocks.”
“It’s not a tale! They killed someone!”
“They did shit!”
Geralt cleared his throat. “I’ve seen the scene myself, alderman. Some poor sod’s been bled dry not far off from your village. I could show you myself, if you want.”
“There are no- no bandits and murderers in the forests of Cyfle!”
The girl skirted before Geralt, a confrontational expression written all over her features.
“I never said it was bandits! It was the fae-”
“I have heard enough!”
The alderman slammed the door on the girl - or at least, he tried to.
As he pulled it closed, instead of moving out of the way or colliding with it, the girl stood her ground, and the door seemed to bend around her, like water around a stone, distorting faintly as it did so, before resuming its proper shape once she had been bypassed.
Geralt’s stomach plummeted like a stone.
The alderman, of course, immediately opened the door around the girl again.
“What kind of trickery is this?”
His bellowed demand fell on flat ears, as Geralt stepped forward to make his query once more.
“Alderman, do you have any information or insight regarding-”
“Get out,” the man said flatly.
“But!” the girl looked between both the alderman and Geralt, wide-eyed, as the alderman repeated his mandate.
“Get out! I shan’t entertain witchers or spirits in my town! Begone, the both of you, or I’ll have Anton set his dogs on you!”
The girl sniffed and stormed off - the door bending around her again as the alderman slammed it shut a second time, and Geralt followed her.
For such a slight thing, she was fast, and Geralt had to jog to keep up - although, perhaps that was just an effect of her metaphysical nature.
The walked in silence, until they’d made it a long enough way away from the village that they could no longer see the farmland or the buildings behind them.
Geralt made a mental note to put Cyfle, in Sodden, on his list of towns to avoid from here on out.
“I told you the villagers would be useless,” the girl sniffed. “They’re all uppity bastards, and trust me, I know an uppity bastard when I see one.”
Wincing, Geralt nodded. That had been rather useless.
Still, that was only one avenue.
“Do you know who - or what - killed you?” he asked, looking at the girl.
“Yeah,” she said. “I told you, it was a fae death cult.”
Geralt opened his mouth, and closed it again, before finally choosing to inquire.
“These fae death cultists... what did they look like?”
“Long,” she muttered. “Skinny, with green skin that looks putrid, and pale, and rotten, and limbs made of wood. They’re graceful when they move, and they have teeth like needles, hundred of them. And they gave these long, cold fingers with sharp nails on the end. I wasn’t lying.”
She shuddered at the memory.
Geralt, for his part, winced. He’d encountered the fae before, once or twice, and the description seemed eerily accurate. The death cult part was irrelevant - it may or may not have been accurate, but if it had been the fae that had tortured and bled this child to death...
But, Geralt had fought a fae before. Beings of unimaginable power as they were, they still had their vulnerabilities.
The question was, if he should risk it.
Something told him he should.
Regarding the girl, Geralt decided to ask his question.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Investigate,” she said. “I told you.”
“But what do you want to get out of it?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. Closure, maybe? Maybe if someone finds out what happened to me, or free my soul, or whatever... Maybe I can move on.”
She brushed her hand against a tree - tried to, but the tree simply bent around her palm, much like the door had.
It wasn’t like anything that has been described in his textbooks at Kaer Morhen, the shifting of the environment rather than of the ghost’s own body. He made a mental note to think on that later. He had more pressing things to do, currently.
“I’ll wait it out, for you,” he grunted, and the girl’s head snapped up to look at him.
“Wait it out?”
“If this is ritualistic in its nature, then they should show up again eventually.”
“You would? And would you...” the girl hesitated, before making a slicing motion towards her neck.
If it was the concept of vengeance or violence she was struggling to voice, Geralt didn’t know, but regardless, it was something he could do.
“Sure. Things like this are my job.”
“I can’t pay you.”
Geralt snorted. “I wouldn’t leave a kid suffering just because they couldn’t pay me.”
The girl looked up at him, wide eyed, and a grin spread over her face. “Let’s do it! Let’s face the fae!”
“You don’t have to watch,” Geralt said.
“But if I want to?”
“You can,” he said.
The ghost girl bit her lip, looking as if though she could hug Geralt. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you so much, master witcher.”
“I’ve not done anything quite yet,” Geralt said, and cast his eye around the forest. “I- We need to get to this clearing again.”
“Yes, sir!”
The girl started sprinting ahead, and Geralt began to follow.
“Are you sure about this?” Geralt asked.
“Positive,” the girl scowled, ghostly fingers twitching with barely-concealed irritation. “We’ll stay close, and they’ll come and try and off us again- well. Off you. I’m already offed.”
Geralt hummed at the unusually lifelike, unusually aware spirit. “I can see that.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Never.”
“You are,” the girl declared petulantly, glaring at Geralt. “You’re smirking! I can see you smirking! You’re making fun of me!”
Geralt shook his head, lips pressed together in a poorly concealed smile. “I would never.”
“Just like it would never be a fae death cult offing people in the woods, is that right?”
“You know you haven’t actually proved that, yet.”
The girl drew herself up to her full height. “I’m about to, witcher, so- so, keep your wits about you, because they’re fae that want to kill you.”
“They’re unusually blunt about it, then” Geralt murmured, drawing his silver sword and twirling it in his hand a tad, before sitting down on the bloodied stump that had held the knife that killed the girl, touching the tip of the blade against the forest floor.
Fae tended to be tricksters, preferred double-crossing any victim they might choose, but a tendency was not a hard-and-fast rule. It could be a double-bluff, in some twisted manner, yes, but it did seem rather likely that this was the work of a, as his recently-extinguished young companion had put it...
A fae death cult.
Either way, being prepared was non-negotiable. Given the way most of these delicate situations tended to turn, he had to be prepared for violence, even if it wasn’t his prerogative to strike the first blow. It would do him no favours to be caught unawares, empty-handed and foolishly optimistic about the option of simply talking his way out of it.
The girl eyed him nervously, taking in his sword, and if the situation were anything else, he’d assume that she was simply nervous of the large, burly witcher with a massive sword, but as they stood - he’d put it down to concern. Nerves, maybe, about the looming confrontation.
He was a witcher. He was well-trained. He’d be fine.
Probably.
“Have you dealt with many fae before, witcher?”
Geralt grunted. “One or two, once or twice. They’re not exactly common creatures.
“How do you know you’ll- ah!”
The girl jerked backwards, shrieking, as though pulled back by some invisible force, fading as she did so. The fabric of the world became visible around her form for just a moment like a gauze, and her voice twisted into a scream, a horrible sound clawing from her throat - a scream that caused the very essence of reality she clung to to ripple, jerking violently as she fought against... the thing pulling at her.
So not a ghost, then.
Corporeal, but metaphysically, present on another plane of existence entirely - that was powerful magic.
No wonder he couldn’t reach her.
The girl shrieked, the sound muffled, barely audible. “Don’t just stand there! Help!”
Geralt sprang up, leaping into action, but as he reached for her his hand twisted, garbling its shape to match with the ripples cast the world around her, distorting with the thrashing film of reality around her- it was painless, but futile, unable as he was to grasp her.
He pushed forwards, trying to get closer to her - to grab her, to pull her back, to shield her, but his hand, his arm, his body, only contorted until he withdrew-
He withdrew, both his signs and swords futile, as the girl was pulled back into her own realm - properly, this time.
And then, a laugh like bells rang out behind him.
“Poor, poor witcher,” came a melodic purr. “Thought he could save what was already gone.”
“She’s in your realm, isn’t she?”
Geralt readied his stance, alert and waiting to turn, to parry a blow, eyes trained on a tiny little pool of water in the nook of a nearby tree - a tiny little thing, that bore the reflection of a cloaked, otherworldly figure behind him.
“We killed her,” the fae said, their biting smile audible in their words. “On the last new moon. You’re early, you know.”
“Be that as it may, she isn’t dead.”
The fae cocked their head. “Oh? How do you figure that?”
“I know dead things,” Geralt said, and glared at the fae. “They aren’t... aware. Or they aren’t corporeal. It’s one or the other, but never both.”
“But we killed her.”
The fae stepped forwards, into the clearing proper, smile widening and revealing thousands of needle-sharp teeth beneath sickly, green lips.
“You tried,” Geralt conceded. “You drew it out, made it painful, judging by the mess you left, but- it didn’t stick, did it?”
“The dead do not come back to life, Master Witcher,” the fae drawled, taking another step towards a tensed Geralt.
“But the nearly dead do, don’t they?”
At this, the fae’s smile dropped into a scowl. “Do they, Master Witcher?”
Geralt spun around immediately, his sword crossing in front of him in a parry, as the fae brought two mossy daggers down upon him.
Metal met metal, in a resounding clash, and whispers sprung up around the outer edge of the clearing.
“You have no iron,” the fae spat. “You cannot hurt me.”
Slipping out from under their locked blades, Geralt spun low and slashed at the fae’s legs, aiming to upset their balance, but the fae simple leapt gracefully over the strike, stabbing downwards with their blades once again, and Geralt rolled out from under the attack before reorienting himself to face his opponent - primary opponent - again.
“A myth,” Geralt said, with a flippancy that he didn’t feel. “Iron’s not the only thing you’re vulnerable to, and silver will do in a pinch.”
“You won’t win,” the fae said, leaping at Geralt with a blade slashing at him from either side, impossibly fast, seemingly impossible to parry until his blades met with Geralt’s quen, cast in the blink of an eye, at a speed Geralt didn’t really think he was capable of.
“And if I do? Will you release the girl?”
“You-” the discordant clash of metal on metal rang out in the clearing, and more cloaked figures emerged from the shadows around them, “-won’t.”
Her heart was a pounding hammer in her chest, the image of the witcher reaching for her, blurry and distorted as if though underwater, unable to break the mirage, replaying itself before her eyes. Her breaths came in ragged gasps, skin crawling as she felt long, lithe fingers closed around her wrists, her arms, holding her still-
Trapping her.
They had her again.
The fae gripping her arm leant closer to her, resting his head on her shoulder.
Her breath caught in her throat.
He was so close, so close, far closer than was okay-
“Now, now, little leech, don’t you go doing that again.”
The fae’s lilting voice and cold breaths were so soft, so near, and she couldn’t help but tremble.
“I’m not a leech.”
“You are, little leech- you sapped energy, chaos that was not yours, at the cost of one of ours. That’s why you’re here, paying your debt.”
“I didn’t- I wasn’t trying to-”
“And yet, you did. There is no changing what is done, little leech.”
Numbly, she remembered the feeling of something warm and sticky spilling down her wrists, of the wind pinching at something gaping and open in her stomach.
She remembered copper on the air and iron on her tongue, and she remembered the needle-sharp smile on the face that watched her float further away as they drained her dry.
She remembered spinning.
And she, ever-so-dimly, remembered feeling a flicker of hope in her mind’s eye.
She didn’t remember latching onto it.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Not a ghost, after all.
She stared down at her trembling wrists - trembling, unmarked, wrists, and realised what the fae meant.
Leech, leech, leech- she thought she’d bled dry in that clearing where they killed- didn’t kill- her.
Oh, gods.
Oh, gods, had she killed someone?
Something?
Had she-
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Never regret not dying.
What would her grandmother think of her now? Falling into a panic over trading the life of an enemy for her own? She’d told her to continue to be brave.
She was brave.
Drawing herself up to her full height, she glared back at the fae.
“Well, maybe if you don’t want people to lash out at you, you shouldn’t kill- try to kill them, have you ever thought of that?”
The fae hissed at her. “Mighty words, coming from a leech.”
“Bold sentiment, coming from a callous murderer.”
“And yet, you are alive, and my sister-in-arms is dead.”
The girl glared at him, with all the spite she could muster. “So, what, I should have just sat down and let you bleed me to death? Let you hurt me?”
The fae ran a cold, spindly digit along her cheek. “It is the duty of those without power to submit to those with it.”
A glare.
“Much like it is the duty of your witcher to fold to my brothers and sisters, fighting on your behalf.”
The witcher- oh, gods, the witcher, she was the one who had dragged him into this mess, wasn’t she? And they were going to kill him for it.
Oh, gods.
Fear bubbled up in her chest, and she tamped it down, letting anger take its place, instead.
How dare they? How dare they decide that it was their right to take lives, just because they could? How dare they trap and torture and murder people for their own amusement?”
“Oh, dear,” the leech said, shiny, sharp smile creeping onto his face again. “Someone’s realising that their actions have consequences.”
She felt that bubbling, burning sensation at the back of her throat again, and she reached up and grabbed the fae’s stupid fucking stick arm with her own, trembling hand.
The look of angry surprise on his face existed only in the moment before the chaos wrenched itself from Ciri’s throat as she screamed.
Geralt wiped a trickle of red from his brow, as he raised his sword again, paying no heed to the nicks he had accumulated during the fight. None of them were deep enough to cause problems - head wounds just tended to bleed a lot.
Given that he was surrounded by seven lightning-fast enemies, he’d say that he was doing pretty well.
“This is getting rather boring,” the first fae remarked. “Maybe we could stand in a circle and take turns hitting him?”
Grimacing, Geralt raised an eyebrow. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account.”
Another fae leapt at him, slashing at him with an amethyst sickle, and Geralt caught it with his sword and wrenched her off-course, throwing her to the side.
The ground began to tremble a little, and the tell-tale ozone stench of chaos began to tickle at his nostrils. That was never a good sign - it meant that things were about to get very messy, very fast, and he either needed to get out of the way as soon as possible, or try and protect himself the best he could.
Ducking under a fae’s short-sword, he twisted his fingers into the shape of the Quen sign, and, crouched, concentrating as much strength as he could into as small an area as possible, creating a harder barrier, a stronger shield.
“Hiding behind your little spells again, witcher?”
Geralt didn’t bother to give an answer. The fae would see for themselves, in a minute.
Or, they wouldn’t.
The trembling grew more pronounced, and the acrid smell of ozone that much stronger, the intensity of the disturbance growing exponentially, too fast for any remaining creature to react to, and-
And then, the faraway screaming of a child started to ring in the back of his ears, and Geralt almost knew what was going to happen before it did.
The matter that made up the world, the membrane that bound together this sphere of reality, rent open, and all of a sudden, the ear-splitting, anguished roar of chaos-filled emotion that had split reality at the seams burst through the tear between realms, full-force.
Geralt looked away from the gruesome scene that the girl’s - because it had to be the girl’s - scream wrought, not needing to see the fae’s skin be flayed from their faces. The splattering of gristle onto his straining quen shield was quite enough.
The scream seemed to stretch for a small eternity, and only when the last, hoarse note had finished ringing out over them did Geralt finally drop the sign, letting out a strained breath that he didn’t realise he’d been holding, and looking around at the carnage that the scream had wrought.
He dizziness overtook him, as he stood - he’d managed to hold the sign against this much, thank the gods - and regarded the tear in the fabric of reality before him.
On the other side of it seemed to be some kind of gnarled, twisted forest, shrouded in a dim twilight glow, with brambles and undergrowth twisting around long-dead trees, and a familiar figure stumbled towards him.
Blood-stained and ragged looking every bit as exhausted as Geralt felt, and he knew she must be, too, was the girl.
She was bloodied and exhausted but alive, and Geralt almost ran to meet her as she stumbled through the rift, the rift that was already beginning to twist and mend itself.
The girl looked up at Geralt with dull, emerald eyes. “I-”
She didn’t manage to finish her sentence before she staggered forwards and collapsed into Geralt’s arms.
He caught her easily, and gods, she was feather-light and terrifyingly thin, and Geralt hoisted her up into a proper carry, and started off back towards the village. He could try and patch her up, himself, but she deserved a good meal, at least, and that much he knew he couldn’t provide alone, and regardless of what the good people of Cyfle might think of them, Geralt’s coin was as good as anyone else’s.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I-”
“Don’t be sorry,” Geralt murmured. “You’re okay now.”
“I almost got you killed.”
Her voice was weak and hoarse, and Geralt felt his heart melt. The poor kid.
“But you didn’t,” he said. “You got out of there. You saved both of us.”
“I got you hurt.”
“I’m a witcher. A couple of nicks are a guarantee of the job.”
A tear rolled down the girl’s hollow cheek, and she sniffled into his chest. “I just got lost, and I- I just...”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Geralt said, stroking her hair with his free hand. “Where were you trying to get?”
“I don’t know,” she hiccuped. “My- I was just told to find Geralt of Rivia.”
And Geralt stopped short.
“Cirilla?”
Ciri’s teary eyes widened as she looked up at him, trembling hands digging into his shoulder. “G- Geralt?”
“It’s me,” he said, gently. “I’ve got you.”
He held her tightly, warmly, and stroked her hair as she buried her face in his shoulder, and started to quietly sob.
He held her gently, as she cried, and resolved never to leave her behind again.
My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
-Emily Dickinson