For an immeasured swath of time, she lay in a corner of the stony floor, curled into herself. If she had thoughts, they were disjointed, then thrown to the wind by any noise from above her.

  Did she– did she sleep? Was it all a dream? War had a form, living and enfleshed, but that form hovered just beyond the walls of her prison, and the formlessness of its shadows and echoes were fantastical, incomprehensible, as a dream.

  But she did not sleep, nor could she sleep, and it was from those interstices of half-waking that emerged the proof that she did not dream, for her senses still forced themselves upon her thoughts, plucking phantasms from the faintest snatches of sensation.

  There were periods of silence– then– that unbearable not-noise– then silence again.

  Unbearable that semi-silence was, for its companion, fear, was unspeakable!

  And no longer was it the transfixing bolt of fear that nails the lungs. That fear was now a cold, chilling terror that simultaneously strangled and set ablaze every nerve in her body. Fear was her only thought, her only experience, the only lens for her comprehension of even her self. It froze her fingers as she reached for thoughts, that flew by her, and left her deeper in that unknowable pit.

  But at length, she heard her own breathing, ragged and gasping, and it strayed close enough to reach– and there it was, in her grasp.

  Breath was the source of all speech, she had been taught, and now, she found that it, too, was the source of all thought.

  So she claimed a breath for herself, and with it, a moment of stillness.

  That sudden calm shocked her out of itself, and she fought a while to regain it.

  How long had she lain there? Meaning held no time for her.

  But she could give measurement to time, she figured.

  What would be the principle? That was what Jeremiah had always taught her to seek: the joints of reality, at which its forms and movements were restricted, and where at fullest flexion, when it could bend no more, its tendons could be teased from its bones.

  It was not a mere question of measuring time, or she might have conceded that her own inner sense of its flow would be enough. It was also a question of sharing that measurement and communicating it, and so it had to set its roots in something in the world.

  The sun, perhaps? But the days changed in length–

  – No, she suddenly realized. The path of the sun in the sky changed with the seasons, and thus its length and the length of the daylight, but as daylight grew shorter, so did night grow longer. The entire days themselves did not change, and that was how she could sense the same time, day after day, throughout the entire year.

  So there was a consistent physical principle by which time might be measured. And since the sky and sun were shared by all, it was a common principle as well.

  – But how long had she been lying there? That she could not tell. That principle was useless indoors, at night, in fog and storm, to the blind, to those in captivity. Another principle, then. Maybe the speed of falling things?

  Still, that meant that it was possible. If only she could escape!

  To escape. The stale air seethed against the inside of her nose, scraped against her dry throat, and she suddenly was aware of how thirsty she was.

  She fought down something between a cough and a gasp, and the fear struck out at her again from the shadows of her inner worries. But this time, the silence that replied gave at least some token reassurance.

  Her nose suggested to her that, vaguely, there was water somewhere. In the metal pots along the walls, came the agreement from memory. Then fear, acting through anxiety, spoke its piece again: metal would surely make noise, and it still was not safe to make any.

  She gulped, the little trickle of saliva doing little to soothe her, but she resolved to wait anyway.

  Silence, silence, more unbearable silence, so that she could hear each of her own movements, the rustling of her clothes, painfully loud, and even the turbulence of her breath in her nose.

  But it was still silence, and that marked the beginning of a day of waiting.

  How was she to measure a day?– she wondered, and considered for a moment if Jeremiah had meant it loosely.

  – Jeremiah! The worry shot to her heart. And Halya, and Susanna, and her parents–

  But she had to wait. She knew she had to, but how was she to do it?

  When she woke up, she knew, somehow, that she had. Her shoulder ached, and her fingers were numb, from where she had slept on her arm.

  The realization that it was still silent came to her so violently that she bit on her lips to keep from gasping. Tears came to her eyes, rough and sudden, her breath shivering in the space between her nose and her chest, as she remembered.

  Still she bore that silence, until she could not conceive of how long she had borne it. The air was harder to breathe now– or was that her imagination?–

  Still she bore that silence, until she could bear it no longer, and in that desperation often mistaken for courage, she reached out to the wall, and pulled herself to her feet.

  Her legs ached stiffly and her knees trembled under her. She slowly made her way towards the stairs, feeling her way along the wall as she went. Alternating beneath her fingertips ran the rough coldness of rock and the altogether different coldness of metal.

  She gulped reflexively to soothe her parched throat, aware of the pain, but she did not care to search for water. Holding her breath, she tiptoed up the stairs until she reached the top, and put her fingers on the boards above her.

  She held– she was already holding her breath!–

  With a brief exhalation, she pushed them off from above her and then ducked down, coughing, as dust and straw fell onto her, finding their way into her shirt. She flung her gaze about the lightlessness in panicked confusion, until she remembered that there was another set of planks above her. Climbing into the narrow space, she breathed in as much as she dared, then pushed up–

  The planks clattered to the floor, and more dried clay crumbled from them. Even the soft light that reached this room was overwhelming, and she stumbled onto the ground as she closed them again.

  Eventually, she felt them readjust and, drawing another breath, she opened them again.

  Inexplicably, with sight came the other senses as well, and the first to reach her was that of smell. A repulsive stench pervaded the hut, of rotting blood and manure, such a viscerally horrific sensation that it brought her to her knees.

  She retched into her hands, into a dry mouth, though nothing came up except a sour bile that burned her throat. Her eyes watered again from the pain and she gasped for air, no longer caring for the noise she made.

  At length, her breathing returned to some semblance of calmness, and she picked herself up again. Broken clay and torn cloth was strewn all across the floor, some soaked in vile-smelling fluids. Slowly, carefully, she made her way to the kitchen.

  She gasped and rushed over to Jeremiah, kicking away the stray cups and plates on the floor. Covered in blood and shit and piss and the gods knew what else, he lay unmoving on the floor, his torso propped up against the doorway to the side room, a ray of afternoon light striking his feet.

  When she reached him, she gagged again at the smell, and immediately, a rush of shame came onto her cheeks, a mark of guilt at her own revulsion. And then, on seeing his wounds, she cried out again.

  His right leg and left arm were shattered lumps of grey-purple flesh, no longer able to take or hold any recognizable form. Those fingers that were still on his hands were bent in a grotesque fashion, their joints broken out of shape, like the branches of some twisted tree. A pool of drying blood and fluids stained the entire length of his legs. His face was bloodied and bruised to an unidentifiable pulp, his eyelids cut open, and behind them, the sockets were empty wells of clotted blood.

  A loop of intestine protruded from a gaping wound in his abdomen, leaking pus from a gash. A waterfall of brown, sticky blood covered his chest, fed by puncture wounds that broke up the skin like jagged ravines.

  And yet, he still breathed.

  “Ah, ah!” she cried, embracing his head, unable to find any other words.

  “Oh, Yana,” he whispered hoarsely, his chest gurgling faintly as he spoke.

  – And then, unbelievably–

  “Worse things happen at sea,” he croaked, with a smile across his lips.

  She was bawling uncontrollably now, hot tears streaming freely down her cheeks, loosening chunks of clotted blood where they lighted on his face. Then she cried, and cried, and cried some more, until she was overwhelmed, and she leaned against the same wall as he, sobbing to herself, no longer caring for whatever noise she made.

  “Oh Yana,” he said again, and she glanced at him and shook her head, as though entreating him to preserve his strength.

  “Yana, listen,” he began once more.

  “Please,” she replied uncertainly. “You don’t have to.”

  He closed his eyes and sucked in a shallow breath.

  “Listen,” he insisted. “I– won’t die from this. Bring me some water.”

  She blinked at him– oh, those red, puffy eyes, her cheeks smeared with filth– as the words sank in.

  “Water,” he repeated, and closed his eyes and shook his head, though he was smiling.

  She needed no more encouragement. Picking up her feet, she hurried back to the bedroom, no longer creeping carefully past the refuse strewn across the ground. With a lungful of trepidation held in her chest, she clambered down to the basement again, and sought for the metal on the walls that she knew would be there.

  Working by touch alone, she pulled one of the containers from its wall, and grunted at its great weight, heavier than anything that she had ever lifted. She hefted it into her arms, and then slowly, unsteadily, carried it back up into the kitchen.

  The light illuminated a curious container, bright as polished tin, rectangular in shape but rounded at its corners, with a large cross indented into each of its faces. It had a small mushroom-shaped stopper, like any old clay jug might have, which had been fixed in place by a ring of hardened resin. She threw a glance at him, then yanked off the stopper.

  An unfamiliar, sickly smell came to her nose, and she wrinkled it. She glanced at him again, but he nodded, even in his blindness, as though anticipating her question from her pause.

  – Had the swelling on his face already started to subside? Or was it just the falling light?–

  Hesitating no longer, she poured some water into a cupped hand, and tenderly poured it over his face, wiping away as much as she could of the grime that caked his skin.

  And to her amazement, the transformation happened before her eyes. It was not swift, certainly not instant, but as she watched, the ragged ends of muscles knitted into each other, the broken skin on his face meshed and wove itself back together, and even his empty eye sockets gradually filled with brightness.

  He closed his new eyelids, and slowly opened them again, and behind them were a familiar pair of grey-green eyes.

  The tears brimming from her own, she tried to speak the words that came to her, but only a dry gasp came. She looked at him, glanced over his body, and her gaze met his and settled there.

  “Drink some of the water,” he chided, though he was smiling.

  Nodding, she sipped from her handful of it, gingerly at first, then greedily, heedless of the strange taste that hung about it. The water, after so long without, tasted impossibly sweet to her.

  And then, when she had drunk her fill, she began to wash his wounds anew. Carefully at first– it seemed that she flinched and grimaced more than he did– then with more energy, as he rejuvenated from his wounds before her eyes.

  With his guidance, she set his joints and bones straight, and they seemed to meld together, turning whole again with a sickening grinding noise. And when she poured some water into his mouth, his gums stopped bleeding, and even his teeth grew back, peeking through flesh that mere moments ago was torn and swollen.

  Then it was done. He lay in the same spot, now startlingly whole, and the light of the sun had already moved to his knees.

  Neither of them had the wits to be ashamed at his nakedness. She wiped the sweat from her brow with a sleeve, and poured another handful of water to drink, crinkling her face at the smell.

  She looked at him and opened her lips but made no sound, as though weighing the question. He replied with a smile and a quick waggle of his eyebrows.

  “The water–” she began, haltingly, as though surprised at the sound of her own voice. She glanced about the room and dropped it barely above a whisper. “Is there something in the water?”

  “Mmm,” he mumbled absentmindedly. “What do you think?”

  She stared at him with her jaw agape, stunned, unbelieving his sheer audacity for thinking of teaching a lesson even at a time as this. But more surely than the sensations from her own eyes, from her own fingertips, this was proof to her that he was truly back, that it was reality that stood before her comprehension, and she buried her face in his hair, laughing and crying at the same time, sobbing into her own breath.

  Then his eyes smiled, and his lips along with them, but still he offered no answer.

  So she took another handful of the water, this time not to drink nor to anoint with, but to examine, with each of the senses available to her.

  She brought it closer to her face and took a sip. It tasted somewhere in between sour, salty, and bitter all at once, but it had a characteristic odour to it, a sort of sickish fragrance, almost like a–

  “– A flower of sickness,” she offered aloud from her thoughts, and he burst out into laughter, a hard, choking laugh that seemed to rattle the icons on the shelf as it echoed off them.

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  “A flower of sickness, indeed!” he exclaimed. “You have no idea how hard you have hit that nail on its head,” he continued, but somewhat more pensive all of a sudden, as though he were musing instead of teaching.

  His eyes quivered for a moment and his lips parted, as though to continue, though for a few moments, only silence came with his breath.

  “In it is a substance called ‘chlorine’”, he finally spoke.

  “Klor– ”

  “Chlorine, yes.”

  She paused in thought.

  “Substance?”

  He bowed his head into his chest and smiled, a smile that she could hear as he exhaled it through his nose.

  “Yes, a substance. At the level of– oh, well, I guess you’re at the age where we’ll have to teach you about the atoms and the molecules, I suppose.”

  He chuckled aloud, and she looked at him, puzzled, but no explanation was forthcoming. Evidently, it was a joke that only he was meant to understand.

  “So is it chlorine that… that healed you?” she asked again, as though she were unsure of the very question.

  “No,” he replied simply.

  “The water itself? Some other substance?”

  “No, not that either.”

  She opened her mouth as though to say something but closed her eyes and remained silent. It was a familiar sight, signifying to him that her thoughts now turned inwards upon themselves.

  Eventually–

  “Then it was not the water at all?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. The disappointment in her eyes mirrored the ruefulness in his own.

  “So we won’t be able to help anyone else with it, then,” she said, making her thoughts plain.

  “No, not even you,” he confirmed. “But that means that you may drink as much of it as you want, without worrying about its value. Both the water and the chlorine are mundane– well, mundane enough– and nothing magical comes of putting them together.”

  She nodded, and from her, that signified nothing but complete understanding. He took that as a sign to continue.

  “Substances, then,” he offered. It was accepted with silence.

  He paused, the pause of someone standing at the edge of a cliff deciding which foot to step off with.

  “Everything in the world, that we call matter, is made of tiny bits of stuff,” he began. Both feet it was.

  “If we could look into those bits, smaller and smaller, we would find that different materials are made of different sorts of substance. If we looked even further, we would find that those different substances are themselves made of a few types of even smaller substances, just arranged differently.”

  She nodded, and smiled to boot. Now, he had taught her a great many things, but he was quite certain that particle physics had never come up, so that eager look on her face worried him just a little.

  “Go ahead,” he said, deciding to let her have a go anyway.

  “Of course, that makes perfect sense,” she said, nodding. He nodded too. Best to just go along.

  “Like how water turns into ice and snow and steam, and back again,” she continued. “If we hold to the principle that there are some substances which cannot fundamentally change, then the difference must come from how the substance is arranged.”

  She needed no encouragement to continue.

  “We may divide a drop of water into ever-smaller drops, so small that we can’t even see them. And in the heat of the sun, they disappear, like dew does, while in the cool of the morning they appear, again like dew. So if air itself is made out of minuscule droplets, even if they’re of a different kind, then some similarly minuscule droplet of water might be small enough to be carried away in the air, like water in itself, or oil in water, and then come together again when it’s cold.”

  “Why?” she wondered aloud, but answered her own question. “I think it’s because the warmth of a fire causes things to move, like how it turns water into steam, which always wants to escape from where it’s being boiled. So naturally, cold would cause these droplets to stop moving, and join each other again, to turn back into water.”

  He nodded, reminding himself never to underestimate her intelligence.

  “What about ice, though?” she asked again, taking a little longer to work it through this time, but he waited patiently.

  “Think about snow first,” he suggested.

  “Snow– oh, snow! Of course!” she chattered, a smile come onto her face. “Small droplets of water come together in these shapes– the smallest droplet must have six sides! Like a honeycomb!”

  He shook his head.

  “Oh, no?” she asked. Her sudden dejection was comical. He made another reminder to never forget that she was still so young.

  “You’re almost there,” he encouraged her, instead of giving the answer. “Keep going.”

  “Is it– a vee shape?” she ventured, holding her hands up in the characteristic 120-degree angle of a hexagon’s corner.

  “Close enough!” he laughed. “The angle of the bonds in water is closer to this–” he raised his own at around 105 degrees– “and they don’t join with each other in quite way you might think. No, but that’s good enough,” he continued. “Given what you know, that’s more than anyone could expect.”

  “But that’s not all I know,” she replied, as though it were a matter of fact, and he chuckled aloud, motioning for her to go on.

  “I always thought it was strange that ice floats on water,” she explained, and a gleam of joy came into Jeremiah’s eyes. “It must be because of how the droplets are arranged with each other,” she continued, “and if a number of ice droplets takes up more space than the same number of water droplets, then it’ll be lighter for the same amount of space, and so it’ll float.”

  He nodded.

  “So…” she trailed off, and he could almost see the molecules as she rotated and linked them in her mind.

  “So there might be a kind of ice that’ll sink in water,” she finished. “If we could crush it hard enough so that the droplets can’t join up into a honeycomb. Maybe.”

  – What a terrifying intelligence, he thought to himself.

  – But instead of saying that aloud–

  “There is indeed such a kind– no, such kinds– of ice,” he explained, “but they require such forces of compression that they are out of reach to us. Perhaps, with the mechanical technology that we have.”

  “Then we have to get better, uh, technology,” she suggested.

  “For that, for other things, or for its own sake,” he agreed. “But first, I think I am ready to stand.”

  “Do you– should I help?”

  “No, let me try this myself.”

  It was not so much weakness as inertia that hindered his efforts. With a strain that swelled the veins just below his skin, he commanded his muscles into action, and they responded grudgingly, dragging his joints out of their torpor with a nauseating grind. Then there were cracks and pops as cartilage found its place, the hiss of air escaping from somewhere it should not have been, and he lurched forward, putting his hands on the ground, and slowly, painstakingly, stood up.

  “Ah, let me get some clothes,” he mumbled. “If there are still any.”

  In the end, he had to get new clothes from the hidden cellar– he called it a “bunker”– since everything else had either been destroyed or looted, and from it, he also brought up a curious walking-staff, made of shining tubular metal, and fixed with a wedge of wood on one end. They spent sometime cleaning up a small space for themselves, washing out as much as could be washed, sweeping the debris into a corner of the kitchen.

  They did as much as they could without leaving the cottage or setting a fire. The soldiers had been gone for a day now, but there was nothing stopping them from coming back.

  “And what if they do come back?” she asked, broaching the obvious question.

  “They won’t,” Jeremiah replied, with something approaching four parts of confidence out of five. “I overheard them talking. They aren’t a large army. This was a raid. Now that their work is done, we won’t see anyone else for a while, at least.”

  “Then–” she darted towards the door, but stopped before its threshold, still unsure.

  “Let us get some food first,” he agreed. “And I will teach you how to walk.”

  The preserved meat retrieved from still more pots in the bunker was dry, gritty, and waxy, but hearty and filling, and it found no complaints. Some dried berries rounded out their afternoon meal.

  “It’s like eating a cow candle,” Yana remarked.

  “Pemmican”, Jeremiah replied. “That’s what it’s called.”

  “It sounds like it tastes,” she mused.

  “Does it?” he replied. “In that case, we should call it ‘khrbrblehomnomnom’.”

  Her eyebrows arched over her nose and she laughed aloud.

  They waited for night to fall before they began their movements. In the meantime, they sneaked peeks out the window (missing its covering) through the spyglass, and he taught her more than just how to walk.

  First, there were the principles of combat movement: to cover ground quickly and effectively, whilst staying as unobserved as possible, and when observed, to move safely, while still remaining in contact with the rest of the squad.

  (He briefly explained the idea of a squad as well.)

  Then came the habits (he shot her a pointed look, but this time, she only nodded). To always be searching for cover and concealment, the difference being that cover might stop an arrow or a sling bullet, while concealment would not. Then to look for positions that an enemy might favour, whether to attack or to observe from, and consider how scouts or a larger force might lie in ambush. Then to observe for traces of other humans, for their tracks and sounds and smells, and to listen for animals that might have been scared away by them.

  And when he was satisfied that she understood why to move, he taught her the how. To stay within a few dozen paces from each other, off to the side, observing their own fields of vision. To lift her feet up instead of shuffling them across the ground. How to sprint (he took a look at her skirt and waved that aside for later) in short bursts, then to drop to the ground. And when on the ground, how to crawl quickly on her elbows and knees, and how to crawl even lower, with her face to the ground, when under attack.

  Then it was practice, practice, and practice, until such time as he was satisfied that she could move safely in hostile territory.

  “Get some water,” he eventually said. It had been– some long amount of time. The sun sat about four fingers’ widths lower in the sky.

  She stood up, panting, her clothes covered with dust. She shook them out, coughed, and decided against doing it again. But not a word of complaint came from her.

  “Are you tired?” he probed.

  She shook her head wordlessly, drawing her breath through her nose instead.

  “We can take a break,” he pressed.

  Her gaze softened for a few moments, but then she shook her head again.

  “No,” she replied, “I don’t need one.”

  Her hands were covered in dust as well, scratched all over from where they had scraped along the now-bare wood floor. Several purple-blue bruises showed faintly through the cloth of her sleeves.

  “Well, I want to wash those, at least,” he conceded. “Even if they’ll get dirty again. Infection can be quite a nasty thing, no matter how small of a risk it is.”

  She nodded quietly and, hesitatingly, drew her sleeves back. He handed her a clean bowl, which she accepted gratefully, and brought over another can (“they’re called ‘jerrycans’”, he had explained), pouring some water into the bowl.

  “Is infection caused by substances as well?” she asked while cleaning her arms.

  “Not–” he began, but finished only with “mmm.”

  There was only the soft rustle of cloth, the swish of skin rubbing skin, and quiet splashes of water on wood.

  “Infection,” he finally continued, “is caused by tiny, tiny creatures. Bigger than the individual particles of substances, much bigger, but still smaller than what our eyes can see.”

  She nodded.

  “Are they small enough to travel in the air and in water?” she asked.

  “Some, yes,” he replied, “but many large things can travel in air and water, though it helps to be small.”

  “No, I meant, small enough to be carried by wind,” she clarified. “Like motes of dust.”

  “Yes, and smaller than those besides, smaller than the smallest grain of sand you could see. Like larger living things, they flourish where it is warm and damp and there is a source of food, which to them, is usually other living things– alive or dead.”

  She nodded, splashing some water across her elbow, wincing as she touched a bruise.

  “Chlorine is poisonous to them, then,” she asked, without taking her eyes off her arms.

  He paused to consider his answer, but his grin told her enough, that she was on the mark.

  “To most of them, yes,” he replied, “in a high enough concentration. Enough that I dope the water with it.”

  She wiped the last of the water off her arm.

  “And in a high enough concentration, higher still, it will kill people?” she asked.

  He could already see where her train of thought led, and it chilled his spine to imagine that she would even consider such a thing. It was already a fragile time for her, and at such a young age, too!–

  – What was he supposed to do, supposed to teach?–

  He drew in a breath and pushed it back out his nose.

  “There are compounds of chlorine that are a gas,” he finally relinquished. “Chlorine, when compounded– when combined and bonded to certain other substances, may be turned into a poison that will disable and kill when breathed in.”

  She nodded again, for the umpteenth time that day, though in the creasing and quivering of her eyes still showed some traces of– what was it? Indecision?–

  And how could he fault her for it? A lifetime is not enough time to get used to war.

  The entirety of the sun’s disc had already fallen below the hills, and the remnants of its radiance clung onto the treetops, faded slowly from the fringes of the clouds.

  “A minute,” he began, “is sixty seconds. In a day, there are twenty-four hours, of sixty minutes each, for a total of eighty-six thousand and four hundred seconds.”

  She scrunched her eyes together, evidently trying to divide a day entirely in her mind.

  “This a second,” he continued. “Learn it.”

  As he spoke, he began tapping with his fingers on the wood. Tap, tap, tap, regular, insistent, each marking a second from the other.

  The seconds passed, and more, and more, until she eventually closed her eyes. Understanding her meaning, he continued to tap them out, but much more softly, so as to be noiseless.

  She looked up.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  – No, you’re not– he wanted to reply–

  “Let’s go,” he said instead, and he picked up his walking-staff.

  Wrapping dark and speckled cloths about themselves, they snuck out the front door of the cottage. In the last of the light, Jeremiah noticed his firewood strewn all over the ground, and absentmindedly to himself, he cursed.

  They swiftly made their way down the hill towards the village. It was dark, absolutely so, with not the faintest flicker of light to be seen in it. No campfires of soldiers, true, but no fires of survivors either–

  Soon, there was only touch and sound to go by, on that moonless, starless, clouded night, but those were enough. They had both walked that path for years on years, and in the dark, she found that she could navigate almost as easily as she could in the day. The feelings of dirt and grass, the sound of wind as it shimmered through rushes and leaves, the smell of leaves as she got close, even the trees that she swiftly recalled from memory, those showed her the way.

  The village reached her nose before it reached her fingers. There was the same smell– of dead flesh, of blood and excrement, and then also, of ash, of dust, of charred flesh, of rendered fat. There was no sound, not even those of pets or livestock.

  She gagged into her hands, but continued onwards. He stuck close behind. There was little question as to where she was headed.

  Gingerly, she pushed open a door and slunk inside, a stranger in her own home. Jeremiah hung outside the door for a moment– was he watching out for something, or preparing himself?– then he stepped in as well and closed the door behind him.

  The stench assaulted him as well, and he could not bear to imagine what Yana was thinking. Her movements were sloppy now, erratic and agitated, which made them easy to follow.

  They stopped in the bedroom, where the smell was the strongest, where a trail of dried blood led from the doorway. She was in a corner inside the door, sobbing to herself, her gasps painfully audible in the utter quiet.

  He set his staff against the wall. From a pouch on his waist, he drew out a candle, a flint, and a knife.

  “Should I–” he began.

  A short couple of sobs– that sounded almost like assent–

  He threw his cloak over the tiny window, drew the curtain over the doorway, then struck the flint into the dark. It sparked, briefly, but almost blindingly, in that complete absence of light.

  Satisfied, he drew some tinder from the same pouch, frayed it in his fingers, and sparked the flint into the tinder, then lighting the candle from the ember.

  The flickering yellow light showed him nothing that he did not already know. He shot a glance over to her–

  – She kept her eyes closed, holding her knees to herself–

  “It’s your father,” he whispered.

  A shiver shook her shoulders.

  He paused.

  “We’ll come back tomorrow.”

  Nothing from her for a moment, and then–

  “Is there something– you got better, didn’t you? Can he–”

  He shook her head, but without looking up, she already knew the answer.

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed.

  “We should have–”

  She began to weep then, openly, terribly, sucking in streams of air, burying her eyes in her arms, as though that would hide her from all the world.

  “Curse you,” she hissed. “Curse you. Curse all you soldiers and all your wars.”

  – “I am already cursed–”

  – “I lament that I must live while I still see these things–”

  – “It is easier to die, than it is to survive–”

  But in the end, he said none of those things, and accepted her curses upon his own soul, as though he deserved them.