I hold with those who favor fire

If she leant forward, just a little, she would find his hand. She'd twine their fingers until his were curved tightly over the bank of hers. He was so near. It would be enough, and it would be nothing.

She struggled now to be content with her place. It hadn't been so hard in the beginning. The healer was needed, not the girl. It was what she expected. It was all she'd known.

In a few more days, he wouldn't need her assistance to remember. He'd already begun recalling pieces of his life with joy, his eyes alive with it.

She knew it was only a matter of time before he didn't need her at all...

The thought sent her to her feet, the suddenness startling her. She would learn yet. It was her fault, after all, letting her mind wander indiscriminately during his illness, taking liberties in the maudlin silence. None of them were real, not the soft raspiness of his voice nor the hammering of her heart.

Tomorrow I will forget. But just for a moment tonight, let me look at you, longingly and with no shame.

Memories are such volatile things, but he wasn't in the least bit intimidated. He was lucky. She would be happy for him, even as she fought to hear him in her mind, fought to hear those words that will never cross his lips.




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Lilacs

Je rêve et je me réveille
Dans une odeur de lilas
De quel côté du sommeil
T'ai-je ici laissé ou là

"I've lived in the continent for over five years now."
Five years. Long enough for some things to change.
"Don't you want to go back home?"
His gaze clouded over. "Too much fresh air."
She'd tried to look away, but the pull she felt towards his eyes was as strong as her guilt.
She sighed. Even after all this time.


Je me rendors pour t'atteindre
Au pays que tu songeas
Rien n'y fait que fuir et feindre
Toi tu l'as quitté déjà

She did read his letters, kept every one of them.
She did write back, she just didn't send them.
Because I'm a coward, she wanted to say, but she'd kept quiet, not trusting herself to speak.
"A part of me feels cheated," he'd said. "I only get to see you today, and not even for a whole day. It's nothing compared to your years of silence. None of it is fair. All of it still hurts."

Je dormais dans ta mémoire
Et tu m'oubliais tout bas
Ou c'était l'inverse histoire
Etais-je où tu n'étais pas

He looked older, fiercer, though the knife scar on his left cheek had softened to a clean, pink line. The man he'd become is as strange to her now as he is familiar.

But when that rare smile broke through the austerity of his sharp, aquiline visage, she was suddenly reminded of things that weren't supposed to hurt.

Dans la vie ou dans le songe
Tout a cet étrange éclat
Du parfum qui se prolonge
Et d'un chant qui s'envola

"Why do you suppose we never made an attempt to see each other again before today?"
"Le destin," she said simply.
"Le destin," he repeated.
Neither of them believed in it, nor were comforted by it.
( She shouldn't be so surprised that fate played dirty at the time when both of them had so much to lose. )

O claire nuit jour obscur
Mon absente entre mes bras
Et rien d'autre en moi ne dure
Que ce que tu murmuras

"She's beautiful. She looks just like you."
His head lifted proudly. "Thank you."
"What's her name?"
He hesitated. She looked up, mildly curious.
"Anneke."
She didn't think it was possible for her heart to leap in joy and wrench in sadness at the same time.


*Lilas by Louis Aragon
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Then he woke her, and that burning heart he fed to her reverently, and she ate it as one fearing...

... afterwards he went; not to be seen weeping.

A ciascun’alma presa, La Vita Nuova, Chapter 3

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