71  

ABSENCE

Karou went to the body, after Jael was gone. Just for a moment, just in case. Drawing close, she remembered the last time this flesh had bled out. Her own small knife had killed him then, and the neat wound was easily knit back up to prepare the vessel for Ziri’s soul.

This wound was… not neat.

Look away.

This death had not been easy, and Karou’s mind screamed for the brown-eyed orphan who once upon a time had trailed her around Loramendi, shy and gangly as a fawn. Whom she’d kissed once on the forehead, and only remembered it because he’d told her. Blushing.

Ziri. And she knew the feel of his soul from when she’d put it in this body, and hope, hope would just never learn.

Of course his soul would be gone. It could never have survived this long in the open, or such a journey. Of course it had evanesced. But Karou still opened her senses to it, because she couldn’t not try. Did I do everything I could? And still she held her breath, as invisible tears tracked down her invisible cheeks. And still she hoped.

Absence has presence, sometimes, and that was what she felt. Absence like crushed-dead grass where something has been and is no longer. Absence where a thread has been ripped, ragged, from a tapestry, leaving a gap that can never be mended.

That was all she felt.