Chapter Text
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
—Ecclesiastes 12:6-7, King James Version
The study was dark.
The man sat cross legged on the floor, wrists balanced loosely on his knees, hands falling limply toward the floor. It was dark: the blinds had been kept down, although the daylight bled in through gaps in the curtains. This had always been a dark room—in poky little Crampton, what light reached this little downstairs study was sucked in and buried in the carefully bound volumes of his teacher. He could hear the clock ticking, a wrong thing he would need to amend. As he would need to amend as well.
He waited in a tangled pile of blankets for his lover to wake, to hear her tread upon the stair above his head. He would have to speak quickly, with the tongues of angels and of men, if he was to correct his fault. So he waited, listening only to the whisper of his breath and the inexorable ticking of the clock.
There was a tread upon the stair, a light foot, he turned, tried to rise with cold-stiffened limbs, stumbled and threw open the door. But Eurydice was gone.