Malitas shall meet its end, but more forces are at play than mere evil.
-Genesifin
Colette itched to return to the terrisdans, but it was proving impossible. The swift recovery of health originally promised by Brandi was not to be. Her impatience mounted as the days joined together, and she pined constantly for movement. Her foot was no longer the sickly black, or even the drab gray that had followed, but the pink skin was now splotched with spidery webs of purple and blue and ached terribly. She did not shudder when she gazed at the ugliness, just pressed her lips together in frustration. There was nothing to do but wait.
Colette passed much of her time playing with Mari on her pallet—legs stationary and the child bringing all sorts of trinkets into the blankets and sheets. She would giggle and nuzzle into her mother’s arms with the abandon of the innocent and untainted. In the night, Colette would regularly awaken to find a tiny whistle, hair clip, or carved animal jutting into her side.
Mari was growing so quickly. She ran about with her tiny legs and would not be deterred from anything. Her smiles and laughs were frequent, and her tinny little voice babbled out “mama” with the regularity of breathing. She had grown attached to her nursemaid Vere, and the two explored and played as though they were not separated by the greater part of a lifetime. The green, lush eyes met Vere’s gray gaze with love and trust. Colette observed and found comfort in it. She could not give everything to Mari, especially here and now, so it was a relief to have someone else show affection for the daughter she loved so tremendously.
Gere visited frequently. He came whether she asked or not, like a bee unable to escape the scent of nectar in the air. He watched her progress with veiled eyes and spoke comforting words, but his hands said more. They twitched, fidgeted, quirked. As loathe as Colette was to create any opening for intimacy, she eventually could not ignore it any longer.
“Tell me what is wrong, Gere.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me,” she insisted.
He lowered his head, puzzled. “How is it you can guess? I’ve revealed nothing.”
Colette waved her hand dismissively. “Just speak. Have the Tindel chosen not to help?”
Gere shook his head vehemently. “Oh no. Nothing of the sort… A gertali arrived this morning from Tera. They’ll scout the terrisdans, examine the portals for destruction, and then see what preliminary work is to be done. They’re leaving at dawn.”
Colette exhaled at the positive turn. “I’d wanted to go, but it’s the way of things. I will send seal to Bren. And follow in a few days.”
Gere remained silent.
A fear suddenly iced her heart. “I shall follow,” she said again, but a question lay in the words regardless.
He met her gaze, pity clear in his eyes. “Your body will not allow it.”
Her anger flashed hot before she even realized a flush had come upon her. “My body or yours?”
Gere pulled his neck back in repugnance. “I’ve spoken my part. I’m no gaoler.”
He stood up and began to pace the length of the ward. His boots barely issued sound despite the swift movements.
Colette bit her tongue, humbled. “I’m sorry, Gere. Tell me. Please.”
Gere gave no indication he had heard, save that his steps increased in speed and force. Finally, the clansman halted and reluctantly faced her.
The silence of the now-still space crowded upon Colette, and her heart thundered in alarm. As their eyes locked, Colette perceived him anew. His weathered face looked older, more mature. She was suddenly unsure of his age. He held the memory of youth in his frame, yet his face was as weary as those who had watched death claim every friend and loved one ever known.
“You will walk again.”
The pause he left was deafening.
“But?”
“There can be no more crossing of the peri. Your body would collapse. It nearly killed you, and it would not miss if you tried again.”
“How can any know that?”
“We’ve seen the symptoms. It’s the same for the Tindel. The blue eventually eats away the body’s ability to preserve itself. It is its way.”
“I haven’t seen any of these people. Who are they?” Colette asked defiantly.
“The elderly mostly. Sometimes those who have spent too much time traveling the peri. But it is the same. The legs, arms,” Gere glanced down to the floor. “And chest.”
Colette flushed and hugged her forearms around her thickly clothed bosom. She had not shown any the bruises that painted her chest with a sickly green pallor, guarding them even when nursing. Somehow, they had still been guessed. Warm tears filled her eyes. “What do you do with these weaklings?”
Gere squatted at her side and extended his arm out to console but then withdrew in a sudden wave of self-consciousness. “Nothing. They live freely in the bethaidas. They live long lives. They’re respected and loved. But just as you guard poison from a babe’s mouth, it’s unthinkable to allow those who have sefent marks to walk the peri again.”
“What about changing bethaidas?” Colette asked softly.
“It’s usually not permitted, although there have been a few exceptions. But for you, yes. You will move. Jurl has requested it.”
“Why me?”
Gere rubbed his creased face with his thin fingers. “There are many reasons. Mari, for one. We want her more centrally located among the clans. But also we want to move you back to Iret because the clinic there is more equipped. Your condition isn’t as severe as most. And you’re still young. Perhaps…” He did not finish.
“Is there any hope?”
Gere looked at her with full eyes. They held a different kind of hope than she wanted to see. He burned with the hope that the wild bird might one day be tamed. It made her stomach lurch.
“Would it truly be awful to live out your days in my bethaida? You’ll have to live in one somewhere, whether here or in the ones on the terrisdans, once they are built.”
Colette shook her head. Her dark braid whipped upon her back forcefully. “I want to be free.”
The man raised himself up wearily. “I only seek your good, Colette. Not to trap you or harm you. You make it seem as if…” His voice trailed into silence, but the implication hung in the air.
He strode the length of the room and bent his frame to duck through the doorway. He paused and leaned back in for a moment. “I can tell the gertali to send a message. Is there anything you wish to tell your people?”
The question was too much for a mere sentence. Everything. It was impossible to convey the need to work with the Tindel, the abrasiveness of the culture, how much the people of the terrisdans relied upon this crucial moment.
She floundered helplessly for words and finally said simply, “Tell Bren to come for me.” She turned her back to the door and curled up on her pallet.
~
Vere entered later, Mari’s heavy limbs drooping from her elderly arms. She laid the child upon her bedding gently, brushed the small forehead with her lips, and stretched her aged back up with a creak. Vere peered at Colette and walked with quiet steps to the door.
“You are good with her,” Colette said faintly.
The white-haired woman paused and twisted around to face her. “She’s easy to love.” Her voice was melodious and soft, like a matured and worked over symphony. “Those eyes…”
The eyes, indeed. Mari missed little, and her pasture-green orbs held much behind them.
“There is hope, you know.”
Colette looked up in surprise. Her thoughts had been so absorbed by Mari that suddenly seeing the elderly woman crouched before her nearly caused her to jump. “Excuse me?”
“Your legs. There is hope.”
“How did y—”
“It’s in your glance. And his too… He hopes one way, you hope the other. But I can tell, there’s a great chance for the sefent to heal. You’re so young. Are they transferring you to Iret?” Her pale amber eyes peered out, foreign but kind.
“What does he hope for?” Colette asked unnecessarily.
“You.”
Her stomach pawed at her with unease. “When’s the soonest I can be moved?”
“May I?”
Colette nodded. “Please.”
Vere lifted the blankets from the lunitata’s legs and slowly moved her soft, wrinkled hands across them. Colette eased into her seat despite her anxiety. These were adept hands. Healing hands.
Vere puckered her lips in thought and continued to caress her worn fingers over the spidery bruises. “In a septspan, the pain will ease. In two, they will move you.”
Colette’s eyes asked the question before her voice could.
Vere nodded. “You will know either way within a moon and a half. Not long. The young—especially in the hands of Iret’s healers—mend speedily. Do not be anxious. Just rest. That is what you can do to help.”
“Will you come with us?”
Vere’s face beamed. She lifted her fingertips to her cheek and let them fall. “That is a compliment indeed. But this is my place. I remain.”
“Mari will miss you.” Colette hesitated and then spoke anyway. “I will miss you.”
Vere dipped her head in acknowledgment but said nothing. She stepped from the room, the creak of her bones sounding as she moved across the hard clay.
~
Vere was correct about the timing of the transfer. The Tindel moved Colette and Mari after two septspan, carrying them in a litter across the perideta. Colette hugged her daughter and pressed her lips together tightly, for she feared what awaited. Her mobility was still lacking, and Vere’s encouraging words now seemed as dust blowing away with the wind.
I am their pet. And my daughter, too.
Colette set her jaw and refused to let the tender emotion bubble out.
My life is no longer my own.
~
Colette stiffened, and her sleep fell like a heavy drape to the ground. A hand, warm and large, had slipped into her own. It had felt good, welcome somehow, but her mind registered suspicion—she did not trust anything peaceful in her life among the Tindel. The lunitata breathed in cautiously, but in doing so she caught a familiar scent. It all but caused her to cry out. She opened her emerald eyes and choked as her lips spread into a smile.
“Arman.” The word tasted like ripe cherries bursting on her tongue.
His thin face opened up in a broad grin.
That smile. That disarming smile, she thought.
He wore shadowy gray robes that bulged over the layers beneath them. Black boots poked out from the bottom folds, and a sapphire cloak rested in the crook of his elbow. Dark eyebrows furrowed over eyes that carried a mixture of emotions. She tried to discern them, but his inner workings remained hidden.
“It has been some time, Colette.” The voice held relief.
And fear?
“More than some,” she replied, feeling the space of its duration with a bitter reluctance. Massada was a lifetime away. Her family, the land, the culture. It was surreal to think the world had continued in her absence without a stutter.
“Your child?” Arman asked.
Her gaze automatically ran to the side of her room where Mari’s pallet lay. The girl was playing elsewhere with the Tindellan youth, but her little trinkets lay in an arrow-straight line across the floor, easily half a man long. She smiled. “You will meet Mari.”
Arman’s voice was controlled, revealing nothing. “She lifed well?”
Colette could not help laughing haughtily. “Birth on the blue is its own ilk.”
He blinked, but in a fraction the long face disappeared again into a smile. Still, while his expression was genuine, there was something else too. Colette could not place it.
“I imagine it is… I have heard strange things, rumors.” He let the sentence trail off, waiting for her to pick it up.
Colette shook her head with a sudden violence and pushed the blankets from her legs. Her body moved stiffly from disuse, but she gave no indication of noticing. “No. I need to know about Bren. Tell me.”
Happiness vanished into an uneven frown, and the mysterious hollowness of his features returned in full force.
Colette’s insides ran cold. “Tell me, Arman.”
He hung his head like a weary and overworked horse, dark hair falling across his swarthy features. Arman heard Brenol’s bitter voice sound through his memory, “You’re never wrong, Arman.”
The juile curled his fists at his sides. I was wrong when it mattered most. And now I shall regret it to my death…
“He is dead,” she said. The thought had graced her mind before, but even still, she found it repulsive and unbelievable. It cannot be…
“No, no,” he replied in a whisper. When his black eyes raised to meet hers, they were brimming with tears.
“Then what? What could be worse?”
The words came out slowly, poisoning the air. “He returned to his world.”
Colette’s mind reeled. She could not comprehend it.
“We thought you dead. Every seal I received told me as much, for no one knew of you. It had been so long… And a woman with child had died of the fever sometime after we left you… We thought… I thought… Bren could not heal past your absence…and he ran.”
The lunitata exhaled and her shoulders fell forward in a slump. Her face seemed drained of all emotion.
His speech slowed. “Colette, I am sorry. We both guessed it, but I told him there was no way you could be alive. It is my fault. Mine. I’d thought…”
She nodded vacantly. Somewhere within she wondered if she could hate the Tindel for their lie, but she felt only an odd emptiness.
“We were destroying the portals. I believed it was the next step to take before we could beg for help from the Tindel. And he slipped out before… I never would have thought he would… Oh Colette! I failed you. I should have come sooner, or at least guessed at Pearl’s actions. I should have destroyed the portals long ago… So many things I failed you in.” His onyx eyes groped desperately, seeking some kind of meaning or understanding in her face. “Oh, Colette. Why did it take you so long? What happened here? Why did you not send seal?”
She gazed back with a blank expression. The truth lay before her, yet she seemed to not be able to breathe it in yet. It settled coolly into her gut, but still she felt nothing.
It will come. The thought was scarier than the hollow emptiness of the present, for who could endure that grief? Who?
Colette inhaled deeply and spoke. The trip with Pearl, her time with the Tindel, their hardness, the gardens, her flight, Mari’s hand upon the spherisol, being held captive by her own injuries, the Tindel’s deception about her presence. She did not share about Gere, but it did not matter, for it seemed as though the juile deduced as much anyway. It shamed her and flushed her cheeks rouge.
Arman squeezed her hand. The comfort it brought nearly drew up the dormant emotions that lay like a dark and mysterious pool within, but she forced them back down. Colette did not want to be awash with feeling right now. She just wanted to be with Arman and to forget the last orbit and a half.
“I am proud of you,” he said. “You have done well here. The clans respect you, as much as they can an outsider.” His eyes steadied as the facts aligned and fell into place. “Mari—do you know what about her caused the change in the sphere?”
Colette shrugged. “Lunitata?”
Arman nodded his agreement. “Or Bren’s blood? Or a pairing of the two?” He paused, contemplating the numerous possibilities. “Regardless, it will save us all.” He peered at her kindly, but her own gaze fell on her legs.
“What’s left to be saved,” she mumbled to herself.
“Colette?”
“Yes?” She glanced up and met his eyes. They were full of compassion.
“What do you need? How can I help you?”
A strange laugh chirped from her throat. She looked back down at the purple-green webs splotching her legs.
Arman followed her gaze and cocked his head sideways in study. After silent moments of consideration, he spoke. “The peri has been harsh to you.”
She did not answer. There was no need.
“Is this just on the legs?”
“They run across my chest too,” Colette replied softly and hugged her arms around the concealed area.
He bobbed his head gently in thought, and his sharp eyes flickered. He released her hand, stood, stepping back several paces to where he had laid his cloak, and began to pilfer through a cornflower blue bag. The cloak and bag were both well-crafted and warm, in familiar materials, familiar stitching. They were Tindellan. A faint surprise tickled at her, but it faded away in the stream of surrealism that eddied around her. She did not fight to hold it.
He rose with hands wrapped around several items. “I’m glad you have healed from most of your injuries. The Tindel know how to manage desert trauma well. Even had I been here, I would have been useless. But now, we shall see. I have things from the land of sun that they do not.” He smiled. “May I call for hot water?”
Colette nodded and indicated the bell in the hallway. He sounded the instrument with a quick peal, and the note carried softly back to where she lay. It kindled alive a tiny hope in her, like the hope she had found with the sunset on the perideta.
The water arrived shortly after, and the juile began to steep several pungent leaves in the steaming pot. An awful scent saturated the room and nearly drew her breakfast from her stomach. Arman did not even grimace.
While the tea brewed, he opened an elongated, clear glass vial full of a pearly cream. He raised it to his nostrils, sniffed, and poured a liberal handful into a palm.
“May I?” he asked.
Colette nodded, still fighting the roiling in her gut.
Arman lit down upon his heels before the pallet and began to massage the white substance upon heel, ankle, shin, calf, knee, and thigh. The sensation was initially cool, but soon the cream turned warm and left a tingling all across her limbs. It felt wonderful, like the tickling of a hot spring.
Arman drew her hand into his and opened her palm gently, placing a dollop into it. “Your chest, please.” He strode to the tea and respectfully kept his back to her while she massaged. As the sensation spread across her chest, her lungs filled with ease. Her head turned light, and she fought to repress a giggle.
“There’re narcotics in this?” she asked.
“Of course.”
Colette sighed, not really caring, and lay back down upon the pallet. Her thoughts floated airily around her head like butterflies flittering from flower to flower, and the sharp ache she had been wrestling down did not seem so acutely painful anymore.
“You will love Mari,” she said after a few minutes. Her heart had slowed, and her mind seemed to nuzzle contentedly inside a gauzy cloud.
“Drink this, Colette.” Arman strode to her with a teacup brimming with the foul gray liquid.
“I don’t think I really want to.” Her thick tongue slurred the words.
“I don’t think I really care,” he responded easily, raising the cup to her mouth and tipping the contents down her throat.
It was spicy, warm, and putrid. She sputtered a bit, but the narcotics had calmed her and turned her compliant. She smacked her lips in an exaggerated movement after he had drawn the cup away. That was the last Colette remembered for two days.
~
Brenol’s appearance gradually turned wild. His clothing was soiled by his rugged living, and he took on the scent of one who does not bathe but every few moons. His beard—just as coppery as the hair atop his head—turned thick and rough. His solid figure slimmed into lean muscle, and his features—at least what could be seen of them beneath the red fur—now appeared gaunt.
The eyes were what they always had been, but more. Somehow, after moons under open skies with bones rattling from the penetrating cold, they had absorbed a softness. His anger seeped out as if unable to remain, and the hardness melted into compassion. He remained a mysterious figure, and for this he was avoided, but his gaze, if ever met, was both gentle and seeing.
He had long since finished the wallet Torgot had given him. He occasionally meandered into a town to purchase supplies, but he found the suspicious eyes exhausting and unfailingly would cower back afterwards to find a cave or create a shelter. His days were cold and his nights colder, but the fiery sting of Colette’s death would not abate, and so he refused to leave the woods.
He purposefully remained in the lugazzi territory. He had no desire to stand by and watch the passing of the terrisdans, so he avoided them as one does an electrical current after a shock; it was enough for him to grieve Colette, his child, and Darse without adding more.
I could return to my old house, he would think sporadically, but it was a statement without roots. He knew he would not tap a foot toward any terrisdan until he had grappled with the darkness inside. So he waited and learned to live with the sensation of freezing limbs and the sound of chattering teeth.
The towns and people of the area eventually seemed to accept his reeking and wandering presence. It was as if he had always been there, and if asked, they likely would have said as much.
~
Colette dreamed.
In the dream, little children played. They had the same rich green eyes and coppery hair as Mari, and they laughed and ran through the gardens and halls of the bethaida. Their skin was ruddy, and their eyes were alive with joy. They had Brenol’s freckles and smile, but her own grace marked their lithe movements as they flew by in play. As the curtains began to steal up around her, drawing her slowly from the dream world, a heavy ache filled her.
It was the ache of what could never be.
She opened her eyes and breathed deeply. While she did not feel entirely normal, the clarity of her mind surprised her. She recalled everything about her time with Arman perfectly, and her thoughts flowed with the natural ease of a hand dipping and slicing through clear water.
The room around her was her own. She no longer resided in the healing ward. Mari’s pallet had been restored along with her own belongings, and the familiarity of the space filled her with a soft comfort. The lights were dimmed—more than the usual daytime shadows—but the gloom did not deter her from elbowing up to a seat and peering down her shirt. The spidery marks were a faint pink-white. They looked more like scars now. She ran her fingers across the slightly raised lines. Her legs showed even greater recovery. The marks were barely evident, and the skin was a lovely pale pink, glowing softly.
Her exhalation very nearly turned into weeping.
“They cannot keep me as their pet now,” she said.
“Were they threatening as much?” A low voice rolled from across the room.
She smiled. “Not in words, but a person wants to know that freedom is possible.”
Arman lifted his transparent figure from the corner chair and strode to her pallet. His robes made the comforting swish that she knew well. He crouched down to examine her legs as she just had, although he did it with an air of familiarity, as though he had done as much hundreds of times within the last few days. Colette blushed despite herself.
“A female nurse applied the additional ointment to your chest,” he said casually.
Colette blushed again. It was uncanny to have another read her thoughts so precisely.
“Tell me how you feel.”
“Weak.”
Arman nodded and strode to the hallway. He rang the bell resting in the low sconce and spoke in a hushed bass to a child. He returned after a few minutes with warm bread and hot tea. He pulled his own chair over to accompany her.
“I’m glad to see we’ve moved beyond the gray sludge,” Colette said after a small sip.
“It is rather unpleasant,” he replied amiably. His dark eyes watched her with their familiar unflinching intensity. His expression was stoic, but his frame revealed a calm. There was however something about his face, something that tickled at her mind.
Colette scrunched up her eyes until she finally grasped hold of it. She set her cup and fare down beside her. “Your face. Arman, you crossed the peri. How is it that your face is still smooth?”
His smile opened up, and his features sprang into evenness. “That is what you ask me? After all this time?” His laughter filled the room with its full vibrato. “The juile are less prone to degeneration. My feet can often take me where I should not go.”
Colette did not smile, but her face loosened. “I do want to ask more,” she said sincerely. “Pearl told me only fragments. I barely know anything… How did you destroy it? The malitas?”
His laughter subdued to a grieved quiet. “It was not me. It was Bren.”
Colette’s chest constricted at the mention of her soumme’s name. He left. Sour emotion bubbled up as if wanting to surface. She inhaled slowly, willing herself steady. She did not want to weep yet. If she started, she feared she would never stop. Her insides quivered but obeyed, and she again felt a strange hollowness inside.
Arman’s voice continued on, “We chased Chaul until it was clumsy with fear. We had Heart Render—just as you had suspected we would need from the beginning. Chaul thought it could win by entering a terrisdan. That we would not dare to destroy our land in order to rid ourselves of its evil.”
“And Selet?” Please let Pearl be wrong, she hoped.
“Selet,” he repeated softly.
“I’m so sorry, Arman.” She knew the pain of losing a terrisdan.
He nodded in acknowledgement but continued somberly. “Bren drove it into the heart of the land. It ended Chaul, and very nearly Bren. His connection with the terrisdans almost severed his own life. He recovered eventually, at least physically, but our time in Selet nearly drove him mad. We were imprisoned for almost an entire moon…” His voice trailed off, the words barely audible. “Ground his teeth by day, muttered of his guilt by night…”
“You were taken by the polina?” Colette asked incredulously.
Arman flicked out his fingers. “Every juile, in the span of an eye blink, had turned transparent. They were mad to find answers. Bren’s palms were as black as the dead land, and he was incoherent. They had no way of knowing our innocence.” He sighed. “It took some time before the frenzy could ease. A healer, Sara, really saved us.”
“You say her name with fondness,” Colette said, smiling.
“I say her name with fondness,” he repeated with a gentle expression, but he steered the conversation back to the events. “But yes, it was Bren’s hand that saved us in the end.”
“Pearl hinted that she expected him to die,” Colette said quietly. “She barely gave me an explanation… She sent me out here. And didn’t stay long.”
I forced myself to believe Bren had lived, Colette thought. But to what end?
“The frawnite…” he said. His voice was veined with bitterness. “I wish she had told me her plans. Much pain could have been prevented had she seen fit to speak.”
“Yes,” Colette replied. She had lived with that sentiment for a long time. And now, it carried a new bite.
She lifted her gaze to Arman’s steady eyes. “Did it—Chaul—ever give a reason for why it did those awful things?”
“No. And I doubt we will ever understand that madness.”
Colette jerked her head towards Mari’s pallet. “Where is she? Mari?”
“Playing. She’s with the bethaida children. Harta is watching her with three eyes,” he replied.
Colette blew air from her mouth audibly—a gesture strangely tinged with affliction, fury, and resignation.
Arman pursed his lips as he observed her. He nodded finally in comprehension: the rawness in her, the torment, it all held clarity now. There was much more depth and grief to the lunitata than even he had first perceived. “So, you saw Darse.”
“You did not know?” Her eyes clouded in confusion.
“Know?”
“I sent seal after the dream. To you. It was not returned. I assumed you received it.”
Arman shook his head in wonder. The sealtors took great care in their deliveries. They did not simply leave letters idly. “Bren didn’t receive it either,” he said to answer her querying look. “It was a surprise when we encountered Chaul.”
Silence gripped the room as the dark images of Darse’s end clouded their hearts. Each felt that their own side of the visions was enough. Colette did not want to know the horror Arman’s eyes had seen, nor Arman, Colette’s. So they sat with bated breath and their own grief gnawing.
Colette’s gaze finally settled down to her cold tea and bread. She lifted the dense, grainy black loaf and nibbled. “Am I healthy now?” Colette asked. “Am I free to cross the peri?”
Arman did not smile but was comforted by the stubborn spark that lived in her eyes despite everything. Would that Bren had not lost it…
“You appear better to my untrained medical mind, but I have to defer to the healers here. They know more about the sefent markings than I.”
“Not enough to heal them,” she said bitterly, seeing more sinister manipulations at work.
“To be fair, I do not know how well my treatments would work upon the Tindel. They are human, but their line has certainly adapted to this harsh world…” His smile returned. “Or maybe I just like to keep a few slips of awe hidden in my robes for the right moment.”
“If you could slip something out to smooth my face again, that would certainly awe me.”
He laughed heartily. “I reserve those somethings just for myself. I like to stay more beautiful than all.”
Colette laughed. “My man o’ fair.”
“Juile,” he corrected.
“Juile o’ fair,” she repeated softly to herself and turned her gaze back to her meal. Colette surveyed the black bread with a frown. It appeared more like a lump of charcoal in her white hands than it did sustenance. And still so foreign. She repressed a sigh. Without looking up—lest he see the pain and disappointment hidden behind the question—she asked, “When do you leave?”
His chuckle startled her gaze upward. His eyes danced in his even and alive face. “You need not fear my handsomeness departing so early. I leave once I know whether you are well or not. I will not run off without your leave.”
Relief flooded the lunitata. She smiled weakly. “Thank you.” She laid the bread aside and settled back into her pallet. She did not even remember closing her eyes before sleep snatched her with swift and gentle arms.