I woke cold the next morning in an empty bed, and surprised myself by how stricken I was on finding myself alone. Pulling the blankets up over my shoulder, I curled around the hole that seemed to open in my middle, and in that vulnerable moment all the catastrophes that had almost occurred poured in and strove at my still-healing edges, until I shuddered and hid my face and fell back to sleep in self-defense.

When I woke the second time, Kor was sitting beside me on the bed with one of my hands in his. "You didn't read my note," he said.

"There was a note?" I said, rising onto my elbow more slowly than I liked. Everything hurt.

"There was," he said, and I heard the worry his hands had been communicating since before I was completely aware, with their gentle hold. "By the lamp."

"I did not make it to the lamp," I admitted.

"So I see," he said, warming my free hand in his, as if he could feel the ache in the joints. "There is something to be discussed, shinje."

I squinted up at him, then said, "Go on."

"I want to stay," he said.

"And for that to be a matter for discussion, it must be because you want me to go, now," I said, and sat up completely, blanket pooling into my lap. The coolth on my shoulders made the fur on them lift. "You want me to begin the journey with the lord and the aunera today."

"And I will follow with Ajan, when he is well enough to travel," he said. He looked away. "I am not comfortable keeping the lord and his lovers here when they have been sent for. But I am also not comfortable leaving Ajan here without someone familiar to see to him."

I considered his face and then rested my hand on his knee. "It is not selfishness to care for your Guardian, Kor, particularly when you painted his ribbons on with your own fingers. Thirukedi sent two of us to this work, presumably so that one could continue it if the other could not, for whatever reason. I would think this situation would obtain."

"I hope you're correct," he said. "It... is... difficult for me to see the way between the desires of my heart and my ishas."

"I will bring them home," I said. "You follow when you can. Only... how will you communicate with the aunera, if we are taking Lenore Serapis with us? Shall I leave Haraa?"

"And separate her from her lord on the final journey?" Kor said. He shook his head minutely. "No, I will not do that to her. The aunera have dictionaries, and some of them can speak, enough to make simple things known."

I studied him and nodded. "And you will use your free time to learn, won't you."

"I think I must," he said. "I think perhaps the more congress we have with aunera, the more we will need a Shame who understands the sins of those who have fallen in with alien ideas."

"Do you fear at all that the taint will never leave you?" I said, quieter. "That if you learn their language, it will become a cancer in you, and that you will forever be... impure?"

"Too impure to be Shame?" Kor said, grasping my implication. He looked away, then shook his head, a motion so small this time that I saw it only by the way the lamp's wan glow on his dark hair glittered. "No. No... I don't think so."

"How can you be so sure?" I wondered.

"Because," Kor said, drawing in a deep breath and giving it away, and with it all the tension in his shoulders. He smiled. "Because, Farren... my soul I have given into the hands of the Emperor, and all my trust. If it is in His keeping, then it cannot be blemished."

"The potter does not always mend the pot," I said.

"Then," Kor said, even quieter, "I trust that He will set me aside when I no longer serve His people." He lifted his brows. "Don't tell me you don't feel the same."

"No," I said slowly. "But perhaps I am less sanguine about the thought, not being the one who welcomed the lash and bore the knives."

He cupped my face and chuckled. "Oh, shinje. How deeply you underestimate yourself. I will have to work on that."

"I look forward to it," I said, and kissed his palm, thinking how strange it was that I had come to love the touch of it so much, knowing it had held the needle and the gag and the whip. But what good is Shame, if it does not also have a gentle touch? "Go back to Ajan—it is where you were this morning, yes? I will prepare the others for the journey, and be gone by lunch. We shall be quit of this thing at last, and free to contemplate... whatever it is that comes next."

He studied my face, still holding it. I permitted that study, and used the time to enjoy the way the shadows gave depth to his otherwise colorless eyes: with the lamp at his back, they looked almost gray.

"You are making art again, aren't you," he said with a sudden twist of his mouth. Since I had been hoping for one of those little smiles of his, I was content.

"Perhaps," I said. "You still owe me those modeling sessions."

"And you shall have them," he promised, and kissed my brow before letting me go. Softer: "Thank you."

"Come back to us swiftly," I said.

"As soon as possible," he said, and went.

Once again, our party gathered in the short, crisp shadow of the Gate: an even smaller group than before, with only five of us where once seven had ridden together, and the lack of entourage was no less troubling now than it had been then. But I daresay all of us were weary of the waiting; even the aunera seemed glad to be going, and their only response on hearing that Shame had remained with Ajan was to ask if he needed anything from them before they left. I assured them he would be fine and prayed it would be so. As much as I had reassured him of the necessity of our parting, I felt his absence keenly; so quickly we had become what he claimed, complementing one another so well that to be apart felt strange.

But as much as it pained me to leave him, I was eager unto desperation to be done with the colony world and its brash, eye-watering light and possessive gravity. The cool breath of the Gate as we approached felt less alien to me and more welcoming, for knowing what was behind its thin film.

The Guardians waved us past—new ones this time, but well-informed as to our identities—and we passed through the Gate onto the throneworld, the perfect, beautiful throneworld with its honeyed light and its softly blended colors, a world in harmony with itself and its people. The out-breath of the Gate mingled with the soft spring breeze, carrying with it the perfume of rainflowers and a faint hint of wet soil; it had rained recently, perhaps. Best perhaps of all, save the easing of my eyes, was the easing of my joints as the world I had been born to cradled them.

Home, at last. I drew in a long breath and closed my eyes as I released it, emptying my body of the colony world's cruel air. When I opened my eyes again, I was smiling.

"So this is Kherishdar," Lenore whispered, so that only Ai-Naidari ears might have heard the words.

"This is the seat of empire," I said. "You did not cross?"

"Not with my caste-peer," she said. "Only he went over, having had a permit to do so already. We did not wish to make trouble for our lord."

I glanced at her sharply at the title she'd given ij Qenain, but the aunerai said nothing more. It was for Haraa to speak, when we had ridden on ahead of the party. "She meant it."

"You're certain?" I said. "It was not some misstep of the language?"

"No," Haraa said, subdued. "No, they have accepted him as their masuredi, insomuch as aunera can understand the concept."

"Can they?" I said.

"I think they long to," Haraa said. "I am not sure it is in their natures, though, to submit to anything. Not completely. They are a little like wild animals, from what I have observed. One can tame them, but some secret flame burns in their hearts which can never be affected by those attempting to civilize them."

"Harsh words," I murmured.

"To us, perhaps," Haraa said, glancing over her shoulder at the aunera, riding on either side of the lord of Qenain. "I think they might be proud of such an assessment."

"This," I said, shaking my head. "This can only end in grief, Haraa."

"What part of life does not?" Haraa murmured against my shoulder-blade. I understood her bitterness, for some part of me had accepted such thoughts after Sejzena's death. But I found I no longer held with the thought that all life's endeavors must end with pain; not with my heart once again open. But perhaps if my grief could have an ending, Haraa's might as well... and until then, I could sympathize with her pain, having been through it myself. I rested my hand on the arm she had around my waist, and she flexed her fingers against my side, accepting my caress.

When I set out on this mission to Qenain, riding down the Ashumel with Shame and his Guardian, we pricked forth little curiosity from our fellow travelers. Everyone knew of Shame, of course, and with his rare coloration and his calling's stark livery he was easily identified... but in the capital one grows accustomed to seeing the evidence of his presence, for that his temple is based there. There are no other shrines to Shame in the empire; we know that, like the god of Civilization Himself, Shame lives in the capital. So, one can grow comfortable with the implication of his presence.

We three had less infamy than I did now, traveling the Ashumel to the capital in the company of two gray-cloaked aunera.

The attention was distressing; you are imagining crowds gawking, perhaps, but what transpired was the very opposite. We were avoided; on the busy road, with couriers and travelers and Merchants all intent on reaching their destinations, we were given a wide berth. At the inn where Shame had arranged our rooms in advance, we were greeted by the proprietor but again, no one looked at us. No one looked at me, even, and I had spent three and a half hours at this very inn, beautifying its courtyard. It had not been long enough for the proprietor to forget me; indeed, someone had carefully preserved the word "joy" by surrounding it in stones, that no one might accidentally disturb the markings in the dirt. But he did not meet my eyes, who not two weeks past had encouraged me to rest my aching back and poured a bowl of sasrith and coins and flowers into my hands.

And this was kindness, in compare to what the aunera underwent, for the proprietor did me the basic courtesy of acknowledging me with the language of his body. No one allowed their bodies to react to the aunera, so that even the sound of their footsteps went unremarked: not so much as a single ear twitched to follow their passage.

By the time we had situated the two aliens in their room, the female was pale.

In response to my concerned expression, she composed herself and said, "I was expecting hatred, osulkedi. Not... to be seen through. As if... there is nothing to interrupt the eyes."

Her caste-peer put a gentle hand on her arm and said something in their tongue that made her bow her head. As she turned to go into the room, I said, "I see you, Shemena."

Her smile was half-hearted, but I thought that better than nothing at all.

That night I found myself surprisingly restless, given that I had spent an entire day in the saddle; not something to which I was accustomed, and an activity that had exhausted me on the way to Qenain's Gate-house. Perhaps it was because of the release of the weight on my limbs; I could breathe easier here, could move with less effort, recognized the smells in the air and the warmth on my skin. Perhaps it was that the colors around me were good and right, gentle things with sublime gradients, the perfect blending of pastels shading to beautiful, muted hues.

Or perhaps it was the loneliness. We had issued forth on our errand with only three people, but two of them were gone from me, and I understood in their absence just how much I cared for them both—not just Shame but his insouciant lover as well. I remembered the perfection of Ajan's clear voice, raised in song as we rode... looked at the bed in my borrowed room and thought it too empty.

My trunk had gone out ahead of us, of course, and by now was home in my studio. But there was pen and parchment available for those travelers who might need it, so I borrowed a sheet and sat at the narrow desk, staring at the blank page.

What now? So near the end of all this? I smoothed my fingers over the paper, careless of the oils on my skin. What word to describe the midpoint of the ride home? So close to completion, yearning for an ending, even a poor one. How painful it is to be in transition, and yet we are forever at that midpoint, never done with growing, never done with our small, personal evolutions.

Some of you are already familiar with our word ishan: the appreciation of the fullness of a thing's span, from beginning to end, with an understanding that it is worthy at every point in that span... that the ending is there, contained in the beginning, and that all the journey is in the ending. It is a good and gentle word, an appropriate one; it is foundational to Ai-Naidar, what allows us to see the intrinsic worth in every individual, no matter where they are in their lives.

I did not paint ishan. I am ashamed to admit I could not, because the pains and joys and healing and breaking of this paisathi of mine—the paisath of all of us—were too tender and new yet for me to have reached that serenity. I owned no serenity; all I felt was tension, and melancholy.

So I wrote that instead. Paisath. Journeys. I wrote it knowing that none of us are done with our paisath until we have died. That we honor ishan because we are deeply aware that all of us are in transition until we are here no longer, and that all of us need one another to live through that journey. To find meaning in it. To have the strength to see it to its end, and reason to celebrate it when we are able.

I had only the inn's ink pen and its small parchment; for that reason, paisath is the only word that is mounted in the book, for it was written on a page the length of my hand, one too small to be extended the way I did the tea house's larger sheet. And that ended up being just as it should be, for every paisathi requires a frame, something to give it context and meaning. Without that, it is just... a broken pot.

We came at last to the capital in the early afternoon of the following day. It felt as if I had left yesterday... and as if I had been gone forever... the only way I could count the days, true to my ishas, was by remembering the number of paintings: thirteen of them, for thirteen darelen I had sat with Kor Nai'Nerillin-osulkedi, Shame and priest and ajzelin. The days before we had chosen to spend that time together blurred together; only the art gave me a sense of the time I had spent on this journey that was to change all the days that came after so irrevocably.

The male aunerai had been here before, but that previous visit had not inured him against the experience; for all his stoicism I saw his breath catch at the sight of the capital's walls, and saw the emotion in his raised eyes.

Lenore Serapis, who had never seen it before, wept. For joy or heartbreak, I could not tell, and I doubted she could either.

I led them into the capital through the Ashumel's gate, and there we were awaited by the nakked, the Guardians who ward the safety of the Emperor. They fell in around us with the precision of their exquisite training; they did not speak, but they did not have to. They led and we followed. With this incomparable escort, we made our way through streets perfumed by the blossoming gardens, past fountains and golden buildings graciously framed in flowering trees, up the streets ever deeper into the atani until we had pierced its heart and reached the capital's center, the midpoint, the source of all the rays of Ai-Naidari influence: the dwelling of Thirukedi, the heart of the empire.

What do aunera think of it, seeing it for the first time? Do they expect something grander? Or is it overwhelming as it is? To us it is a little like a temple, the seat of Civilization; it is gracious in design and girdled in gardens and fountains, and the breezes that pass through it smell of incense. There is something of permanence in it—the warm golden stone—and something of the ephemeral, in the blossoms that litter the stairs leading inside, petals that are taken by the wind before any gardener can sweep them away. It is a little uncanny in that way: there is a sense to the heart of Kherishdar that it is maintained by the spirit of its people, rather than their bodily selves, and that all the Servants and Guardians and Public Servants who work there are ornaments on that spirit, which is animate without them.

But for me, I would say that what I remember most of the Emperor's residence, the few times I have been in it, was the light... warm, welling brightness, as if the soul might grow in response to it the way a flower would.

...but I was not to enter this time. The nakked escorted us to the residence and we found there a Servant, garbed in layered robes of mist-gray and pearled pink and wearing the token of empire around her wrist. So composed was she that I think the aunera took her for a statue until she spoke first, as was permitted by her role as one who greets those who come to a House.

"The nanaukedi, the fathrikedi and the aunera are to dismount," she said. "They will be taken inside to Thirukedi, who awaits them."

Haraa's surprise I felt in the tension of her shoulders and arms before she released me and slid off the beast. She joined the others, glancing at me once before one of the nakkedi gathered them with his eyes and led them away. As they walked up the steps, the Servant returned her attention to me.

"You are alone, osulkedi?" she asked, politely Abased but with a forthrightness that her role as the Emperor's Servant required.

"Shame could not return immediately," I said. "He will be escorting his penokedi home once that worthy is recovered enough to make the journey. I can explain further...?"

"Thirukedi will send for you when He is ready for your report," she said. "If you wish to leave your beast here, we will have it returned."

"That would be a great help," I said, and dismounted. I bowed, then. "I will await the Emperor's summons."

"Go with peace in your heart, osulkedi," she answered, and took the mount's reins.

She vanished then, leaving me to contemplate the palace's doors. The lord and his lovers and Haraa had all gone, and with them my duties had been discharged. It felt strange to be free of this mission; I could not help but feel as if too many things had been left unfinished. My artist's soul whispered that the final touches on the work had not yet been added, and I could not help but wonder. How would that story end? What final stanza awaited the poem that the lord had begun in his ascension on the stairs?

Perhaps I would never know.

At last I turned from the palace and departed, on foot. It was the first time since I'd left that I felt some hint of normalcy returning to my life. I found it... strange, but soothing. Even if journeys never end—perhaps particularly if they do not end—it is wise and good to rest, now and then.

What was it like to go home?

What is it ever like to go home? When one has been away? When one has changed so much?

I opened the door to my studio and saw again the gracious space I had spent so much of myself in. Aphorisms to soothe troubled spirits, wisdom tales to teach, words to inspire the young or the struggling, paintings to lift hearts or calm them... I touched my fingers to the edge of my work table and felt the years of my life there, layered on one another like glazes on a slow-drying painting. The air here had substance, and the pigment there had been formed of my own soul.

Every day. Day after day. Giving of myself. Pouring myself from a broken vessel onto parchment, racing to empty myself into my gifts to others before the last valuable thing in me had seeped away.

I sat on the window-seat in the early evening, watching people as they walked home from their errands, their work, their social calls. I remembered the feel of the pages of Shame's journals; remembered reading them right here, remembered my first astonishment at his genius. I remembered falling asleep on the window-seat, crumpled over the first of those journals.

I kept the dareleni.

I know it seems nonsensical at first hearing. I almost didn't. Kor was not present, and not likely to be so in the flesh for several days. But that was the thing that created the need for the dareleni. His absence had become a hole, and I made the art in response to that hole. Because even his absence implied him, and I could not do anything but face it.

So I went into the trunk, which had indeed been delivered, and brought out the paper block. I cut a page free and set it on my work table, a proper work table at last, large enough for me to spread out, for my arms to move without cramping. I laid out all my materials; I even opened my locked cabinet for the pigments made of ground gemstones and the precious metal leafs.

Perhaps I had been among aliens too long; perhaps even a moment is too long, for an Ai-Naidari to be among aliens. But when I put brush to paper, I was seeking a concept I could not easily choose a word to describe. It is thus, aunera: our words, uninflected, are plural—I have said this before, I believe—one begins with the plural and creates the singular. Thus, Ai-Naidar, and one Ai-Naidari. Until my visit to the colony, I had not realized that there was some other way to exist. That one might begin with the singular, and from that form the plural. That one might begin with isolation, and build community. It is not so with us; we assume community, and make allowances for isolation, and this is normal, this is how we survive, this is how we think.

...except for years, I had not been living that life.

Coming home to my echoing studio and the revelation of the empty years I had spent here, so devoted to my ishas and so consumed in my mourning, I realized... I had been living like an aunerai. Apart. Singular. Isolate. That the one rare and perfect love that Haraa had thought so astonishing had created that situation; I had had all that I needed, and when I lost it, the devastation was complete. Not just emotionally, but in my mind, in my assumptions, for it had taught me that one person was sufficient.

If one person is sufficient, aunerai, then when that person is taken away, no one can be again.

How strange, I thought as I painted flowers. How strange to realize how alien I had been in my own mind, long before I ever met one of you. How deep and perilous the crack in my pot. And how wise Thirukedi, to see it.

What I wanted to paint was the truth of what it was to be Ai-Naidar. To chase that subtle understanding into a single word, that we assume solidarity and communion, so much so that even our language builds on that basis. That to hold oneself apart is to be incomplete in a way so implicitly understood we don't even name it. Even our expressions are different from yours: you say of someone that they are complete in themselves. We say we are complete in others. And we both think this brings serenity.

So I painted an absence. Of Kor. Of Ajan. Of Haraa, the lord, his lovers, of what might have begun with Seraeda and had not. I painted the absence of my beloved Sejzena. Of my lost Marul. I painted the absence of my family, still in the country serving their rithkedi Noble. I painted the absence in my heart and the silence of my studio.

I painted flowers, ornate and delicate and lovely, peach and pink and silvery gray, lavender and yellow faint as dawn. I painted sorrow-nots and sovereigns and cloudsbreath, honeyfletch and brightsheaves, lilies and pansies. I painted blossoms that herald youth and those that honor death and all the flowers that celebrate our paisath in between.

I painted them around a vacuum in the center of the page, and left the center blank.

Now, as in the beginning, came the time that blurred, without form or context. The days between my return home and the summons that began my new life seemed one long stretch. Very little about them remains distinct in my mind: the sunlight, warm without burning, so gentle on the felt-soft fur on my face and ears, that I recall. The lack of strain in my walk when I walked... and all the walking I did.

That I remember best of all. That I walked everywhere. To bid it all farewell.

This has been my studio since I came to the capital; some of you might know a little of that from other tales I have related. I lived in the atani of the lord of Neriethen, who first engaged me as a Public Servant artist on behalf of his people. When Thirukedi came to claim me some years later, Neriethen's lord told me he would be honored did I remain in the studio he had given me, despite my now being osulkedi to the empire entire, rather than his district's calligrapher. So I stayed, because it was home, and from that studio I went forth on my errantry when I was required, or stayed home and painted scrolls that were given to whomever Thirukedi deemed needed them. But I had never felt the need to leave. I had had good years here, and it was in this bed that I honored my vows to Sejzena in her lifetime, and conceived my only daughter... and in that bed that I honored my vows to Sejzena after her death, and slept alone.

So many memories.

Nor did the studio own them all; the district itself was dense with them. The cafe with the melon and sweet rice dish. The shrine where I burned incense for my ancestors, and my father in particular. The clinic where my friend the district physician dwelt; the route to the library, where I was a familiar sight to the ancient and enigmatic librarian. The fountain where I first saw ajzelin close enough to read the joy in their eyes...

This place was home.

Was home. How could I stay here, with the ghosts of the lost and the weight of the empty years that had followed? How could I make a life here without my ajzelin? I could not imagine living in the temple with Shame, but neither could I imagine him trapped here, in a sunlit studio barely large enough for me alone. I could not conceive of what my life would look like after this, but I knew it would be different. And so I walked, to all the places I had frequented before. To look at them, again. And to come home and paint them, in miniature: little rectangles on a single page, glimpses of a moment in time, of morning sunlight on the awning of the cafe, of late afternoon gilding the water rippling from the fountain's center, of the warm red glow of the paper lantern that still hung outside my studio door, gift of a son of Saresh.

These miniatures were all painted in the moments stolen between my long peregrinations. But I stopped my work at supper, and did not resume it again until the following day. After that first evening, I did not keep the dareleni. Instead, I sat on the window-seat, or in my bed, and read the journals that remained in the trunk I could not bring myself to fully unpack. And this time, when I found reference to blood and guilt and expiation, I thought less of literal knives, and accepted Correction. The harm I had done myself was no less grievous for it being exacted in silence, in a form that no one would easily recognize. To allow oneself to bleed to death unnoticed is no less a form of suicide than to ply the knife directly.

There came an evening when there was a knock on the studio door and I opened it to find Shame, and my two worlds, the new and the old, suddenly touched. To this day, that image remains an imperishable memory: the glow of pale starlight on the fringe of hair against a cheekbone limned by the dim red glow of the lantern hanging alongside. I can even smell the sweetness of the night-blooming irises that drifted in with the evening breeze as we faced one another across the threshold of my studio.

And then I stepped aside and he entered. I began to ask the question when he interrupted me by gathering me into his embrace; he knew better than I did what we needed, and we did, we did need it. I folded my arms around him and together we leaned against one another, breathing in tandem, until I had the smell of temple incense in my nose and he, no doubt, the smell of sizing and oil and lampblack ink.

When at last we parted, I said, "Ajan?"

"Home," he said. "At the temple sleeping under the eager watch of the others. He will have no want; I think they sent for the physician just to be sure of him, but he is hale, Farren. He made the journey upright, if worn."

"Unbelievable," I whispered.

We both savored it in silence: from death's certain grasp to returning home in some handful of days? In some things, aunera, your temerity cannot be trammeled in words. You ordain, and somehow, sometimes, the world obeys.

"I have sent word of my return," he said. "You have not spoken to Him?"

"I await His summons," I said. "I have come to believe He is waiting on your arrival."

"Then it won't be long," he said, and turned in place, studying the room. "So," he said. "This is your studio."

"This is my studio," I agreed, quiet. "Shall I show it to you? Or do you wish to investigate on your own?"

He glanced at me with a quirk of a smile, and I remembered anew his complexity of expression, and loved it anew. "You ask such questions, Farren."

"Only to learn the answers," I answered, affecting innocence.

He chuffed a low laugh, then said, more seriously, "I think... I would like you to show me."

So I did. It is not a large place, my studio. But I showed him my work table—much larger than the shabati I had used in Qenain—and the flat table on which I spread designs before clients. We toured the area near the window-seat and the back room where I made my bed and performed my ablutions. I showed him the storage for all the scrolls and paintings, and the cabinet where I kept the pigments too expensive or dangerous to be left untended—you wonder perhaps at crime, but I bid you think instead that ours is a society rife with children one might not want playing with pigments made of ground gemstones. I led him past the samples hung on the walls, where so many others had browsed; in keeping with his habit, he truly looked at them, each one with separate attention, in a way that no Ai-Naidari had before and none have since. Finally I made him tea at my little dinner table, where I once entertained other callers—the historian, the physician, the Merchant who made masks—and there he considered the final paintings I had made for the darelen in his absence: yan, which he hadn't seen; paisath; and the absence crowned in flowers. On these things he made no comment, but I found I did not need them. I was glad merely to have him near.

After this tour, he returned to the window-seat. I had left one of his journals there; he picked it up and thumbed through it, then looked at me.

So I sat in the window-seat, and instead of the book, Shame joined me there. It took some arranging of our feet and clothes and tails, but we fit. And then, comfortable in our shared silence, we looked out into the gloaming. When no more Ai-Naidar walked past the window and the lamps outside had dimmed, we retired by tacit consent to my bed. We settled easily, as if we had not been apart, though I had forgotten how heavy his arm was over my side.

It had never occurred to me to wonder at how he always began and always returned to this position, with all of a Guardian's trained instinct to ward my spine with his body and my chest with his hand. It was strange and wonderful to be so precious to someone; it was perfect that being thus gave my beloved the chance to be more fully what he was. Kor, Kherishdar's Shame. Whom I loved.

I remembered then that I had painted an absence before: shemailn, treasure. I knew I would never paint that absence again. Not because Kor had filled the emptiness, but because he now stood guard at the door. Keeping me safe... and holding it open.