• Mature • Look With Your Heart (Elyna)

[Faith Augustin]

15th Saun, 716

It had been ten trials since the brand, and during that time it had completely taken over her dreams. She dreamt of pain in her shoulder, of burning her shoulder, of all the things that could, did and should hurt her. The silver-eyed waif had slept fitfully and, whether she was on the mattress on the floor in her room or sharing Master's bed, her sleep was shallow and troubled. But always, in each dream that she had experienced (if she was honest? Each dream both before and) after the branding, he had been there. Sometimes in the background, sometimes just sitting and holding her whilst they talked. Always, he had been the quiet place where she went to escape the reality of her life. The one that she did not admit to - the one that she, in fact, denied completely. Because more than anything else, on a subconscious level that she could not fully comprehend, and knew she must never acknowledge, Faith knew that it *hurt*. Both before, and after, he had paid someone else with no face to brand her.

And it hurt more than the others had. It confused her more than the others had. And so, sitting here on the floor of the classroom - of Malcolm's classroom, with her knitting in her hands, there were two of her. One, dressed in the fine clothes that Tristan had bought her,

the other in the ill fitting rags Jamal had made her wear

Both of them her, but one of them aware of her feelings for the man whose room she was in.

the other one aware of the illusion the first one was harbouring.
That illusion that somehow, in this new place, she was better off?
Foolishness
Young. Childish
Foolishness.
It had no place here.
Not where he might be.
Here, she must be a woman.

That she was treated in a different way, that Master was kinder to her than any other had been. He had bought her clothes (to parade her, that niggling doubt said) and he had sent her to the House of Roses for training (to please him, it replied). But he let her eat at the table, let her sleep on a mattress. He treated her like a person. And surely, she told herself, a worthless person was better than no person at all? He had told her that she was a treasure

"If I am his treasure, why did he hurt me?"
she spoke the words without realising it,
but they resonated around the room

But there, in Malcolm's classroom in the university, the girl in the rags faded away, pushed away and denied by the girl in the good yellow dress. It was beautiful, that dress. She wore a slave's chain around her neck and her shoulder was on fire. Just the shoulder, and it was alright now, she knew. But sitting there, knitting, she looked up and she saw that there was a woman here.

Oh, she was beautiful.

Who was she?

"Malcolm isn't here right now" she said, sitting cross legged on the floor and knitting. Her silver eyes were troubled, concerned. Worried for him "I haven't seen him for a long time and... " she motioned to her shoulder, which really shouldn't have flames licking up it, but did "I wanted to tell him that I was thinking of him when it happened. He helped me, you see and now I can't find him. Do you know where he is? I'm making him a jumper, you see" she held up the knitting and it was, indeed, a jumper. It hadn't been a moment ago but it was now.

"I think I love him, you see.
But I only ever met him once.
He taught me, though...
... he taught me that I'm free.
Free to learn"
It was her voice, but she didn't know where it came from.
So, she looked at the woman and she smiled.

[Elyna]

Elyna fell through dreams faster than she could make sense of them. Every landscape, every breath was marked by pain and fear. Flames licked at her heels and the worlds were tinged with crimson. Finally, head thumping the woman could make sense of her surroundings. Feverish sleep finally gave way to exhaustion and she was pulled deeper into the dream, where the pain couldn’t needle at her mind.

The library was dim. Books stacked in haphazard piles that rose to the ceiling, wobbling and threatening to fall. She wandered between the shelves, running a hand gently over the row of spines. She couldn’t read what they were called because the letters blurred in her vision, so she gave up trying. A dust cloud followed at her feet like a stray dog, weaving between her legs. Did she owe the library a book? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken one away on loan. In Ashan she’d been careful to keep her research within the towering hall.

With little interest in the room, Elyna sought out the closest door and stepped through into the classroom. Neat rows of chairs lined up like soldiers to the back of the room, empty. The chalkboard was black, smeared with white chalk in broken lines of text. A young woman, inky hair stark against a pale face and yellow dress looked up from her knitting. Elyna glanced quickly at her own rough breaches, shirt, jerkin and bare feet. Was she underdressed? Was there going to be a lesson? But she hadn’t bought any books, or even a pencil.

"Malcolm isn't here right now."

Her brows furrowed. No, he wasn’t. Malcolm was sailing across the ocean, or exploring a distant world. He was gone.

Silver eyes were troubled, concerned. Worried for him "I haven't seen him for a long time and..." she motioned to her shoulder, which really shouldn't have flames licking up it, but did "I wanted to tell him that I was thinking of him when it happened. He helped me, you see and now I can't find him. Do you know where he is? I'm making him a jumper, you see."

Jealousy had a bitter taste and Elyna held her tongue. At least the woman wasn’t blonde. But who was she? Another paramour? Another lover? Once the Skyrider had tried to convince herself that she, Elyna, was merely another string of transgressions against Vanessa. Somewhere between his ordeal in the arena and their wedding, she had tied the idea up in a little box and thrown it away. She had believed that he loved her. Her body was blocking out the pain in her leg, but her throat was still sore. At Marcus’s mercy, she didn’t know what to believe anymore. No wonder her dreams were ready to provide her with a string of Malcolm’s lovers.

Free to learn? The young woman rubbed a hand over her brow; trying to make sense of what the raven-haired beauty was telling her.

“Your arm is burning,” Elyna swallowed her resentment and approached with care. She scanned the room for something to douse the flame as she knelt, “does it hurt?” she studied the silver eyes before pulling the leather jacket off, slipping it down her shoulders before offering it to the woman, to put out the fire.

“You shouldn’t love Malcolm,” she warned. There was no saving her own heart, but maybe she could help someone else, “you don’t need him to be free.”

[Faith Augustin]

Faith didn't know that the woman she was talking to had any relationship with Malcolm, of course, didn't know who the woman was at all. But she looked up at her, putting the knitting down to one side and she frowned, concern etching a line across her forehead as realised something "You seem to be sad. Why are you sad? Would you like to learn to knit? I... it helps me, when I'm feeling sad." she explained. It was true, the act of making something, no matter how, always soothed her if her mind was troubled. And this woman in front of her, her mind was troubled, Faith was sure of it. But yet, the woman was kind, too. As she moved towards her, motioning to the flames on her shoulder, she was concerned for Faith's well being. Faith watched her, almost inspecting her as she moved. She had a level of caution, but the word that Faith kept coming back to was kindness. And if there was one character trait that Faith liked and admired it was compassion for others.

As she offered Faith her jacket, Faith shook her head, but smiled gratefully at the same time. She moved herself, though, pulling back before the woman burned herself by touching the flame that Faith knew (although she couldn't say how she knew) wouldn't go out. "It's the new brand. It won't go out for a while. When I had the other two, they were on fire for a few weeks. I think it's because it has to burn deeply to stay and be visible to everyone. But if you try and put it out, it will only burn you. Thank you, though" she smiled at the woman and her silver-grey eyes were intense and earnest as she did.

"Oh, I know I shouldn't" she said, of Malcolm and loving him. "I shouldn't love anyone. It's just.. when you're a slave, people either tell you that you should not be a slave because slavery is bad, or they get angry at you, or they humiliate you any way they can" the way that she explained it was calm and considered; she was not judging any of the three reactions, they were not hers to judge and to Faith, how people treated her was entirely up to them. Such was, after all, the way of the world. "I've been allowed out now since the first of Ymiden, and that's been true of everyone I met except him and one other. He didn't do any of those things. He spoke to me like a person and he told me that I could learn, even if I wasn't allowed in the University" considering how it sounded, Faith's lips lifted in a crooked grin "I suppose it sounds like I'm easily pleased but.. no one had ever spoken to me like that before."

The young woman looked around the room they were in and breathed in; it was a smell like nowhere else, she realised (although of course she had never been there) and it was a nice smell. It smelled of learning and knowledge and calm and quiet. It was like a totally different life here, and somehow she wanted it whilst knowing that she could never have it. She shouldn't want, she knew that. "Do you love him?" she asked, turning her attention back to Elyna. "Or do you need him to be free?" And, then, she realised that she had asked that question and she lowered her head, cursing herself for a fool and speaking too much of what she thought. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't ask that. I just... well I wondered why we're both here. It's like.. well, it's like we're both looking for him, I thought. But I shouldn't be so forward. My name is Faith, by the way." she added the last with a glance and an almost hopeful smile that the woman wouldn't be irritated or cross at her questions. Somehow, it seemed to be more than alright to ask such things here, whereas she wouldn't consider it normally.

It must be because of the quiet, she considered as she watched the woman she shared the room with and wondered just what - or who - had drawn her here.

[Elyna]

The jerkin was abandoned to one side. It was a hot day anyway and the woman’s fingers dropped before she could touch the burning flame. She searched the silver eyes for some kind of sense and was shocked by the simple truth laid bare by the dark-haired girl. Elyna shuffled and sat back, cross-legged before her. She watched the deft fingers on long needles with envy.

Yes, she was sad. The Skyrider was angry, betrayed, wounded and she was trapped. There was nowhere for those feelings to go, and so she was a puppet with cut strings, tangled, broken and desolate. The woman ran fingertips along the back of her neck, self-conscious and aware that she had been thoroughly seen, “I get confused,” she admitted, eyes still fixed on the back and forth of the wool. “I can’t make sense of the way the knots go and…I get…tangled in my mind. I like to sew though,” a faint smile pulled at the corner of her mouth and she set her back against the wall. Gazing from the floor up the rows of abandoned chairs. The room seemed to whisper with all the voices it should have held. It was quiet though, peaceful.

A new brand? The Skyrider found that her own hand was pressed against her right thigh. The mark Marcus had carved felt as though it was burning through the muscle in her leg and she flinched. At least, some of what the woman was saying about Malcolm made a little more sense. He’d been kind to her. But did that mean they were lovers? Did it mean that they weren’t? A slave…Elyna looked down at the hand on her leg, pressed hard to the open wound beneath. Liquid started to seep through the material of her trousers, the blood looked black on the dark fabric. The examples Faith gave, of how people reacted to her, weren’t dissimilar to some Elyna’s own. She’d never wanted to humiliate a slave, but she hated to see people owned like animals.

“I…wouldn’t like to be a slave,” she admitted, quiet. “I wouldn’t like to lose that control of my life, to make my own choices and to love,” she held the tip of her tongue between her teeth. “Slave of not…loving is not something you chose to do. It’s…take from you. Little pieces of your heart are stolen by love,” she swallowed, “taken whether you want to lose them or not.”

The final question.

"Do you love him?" she asked, turning her attention back to Elyna. "Or do you need him to be free?"

We had fun. Malcolm had looked down and he had shrugged. Dismissing her like a stray dog returned to its owner. She would have gone on with her life. She would have married Marcus. But then Malcolm had needed her and she had needed to help him. It had never been a choice. Elyna studied the ring he’d given her and the dark natural pearl that looked like a storm on the sea.

You’re mine. He’d told her. Gripped her face with filthy hands and re-claimed her. The Skyrider pressed the damp material against her flesh before lifting her fingers. Blood followed the line of her fingers and pooled in her upturned palm. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Except that I love you, no matter what we are. No matter where we are, or how far apart. Only that I love you.

She had answered with everything she had to give. Then she had been greedy; how dare she want so much? The woman loosened the ring from her finger. Easy to do with the crimson liquid to make it slick. She set it down on the floor and watched as it settled, rocking back and forth.

“I belong to Malcolm,” she admitted. “I love him. But I don’t want to anymore.”

[Malcolm]

The man had been in and out of sleep all night, tossing and turning. There was a strange burning in his thigh that caused him to lift the blankets back every now and then, light the lamp and check to see that he hadn't been bitten or worse. His skin was warm to touch and looked perfectly fine, free of bites, marks, and burns, but something nagged at him. Elyna.
He sought her through the reach of his gifts, eyes closed and head heavy against the pillow. His heart rate dropped substantially to match hers and when he was unable to see through her eyes, he knew that it was only in dreams he would find her.
The misty cloud of Emea formed in his mind as a lucid state of dreaming took hold, plunging him into the depths of his sister's realm. He moved through the doorways and navigated the shrinking corridors to the gate of her dream, the walls of the dreamscape shaken by his intrusion, barely noticeable to its dreamer's.
It was behind the pair that his form appeared, down at the head of the lecture hall where he had too often stood, teaching a class this, that, and the other. Elyna was in the presence of a stranger, the two of them speaking. Malcolm knew to be careful and introduce himself to the dream smoothly, lest he shake them from the reality their mind's had created and see one or both awaken.
It was with a light ringing sound that his eye was drawn to the floor and the discarded ring, a sight that saw the words to follow fall on deaf ears. Suddenly it was no longer important if the pair remained dreaming, as without thinking, Malcolm stepped forward to collect the ring. It fit over the point of his forefinger, but only just, going no further then the first joint. He stared at the dark pearl and everything it symbolised to him blinked on the blackboard behind him in fluid, chalked imagery. Scenes of the two of them, their home, the wedding, everything they had been through up until this point, the fine line between his lucid state and dreaming now blurred.
Malcolm stared across at Elyna, lofting his head slowly to pin her with a trouble look, a soft knot forming at the centre of his dark brow in the worn skin. Flames danced away from his hands, white and blue. His shoulders tightened, feet turned out slightly from one another with half a foot between them. The clothes he had subconsciously donned were nothing out of the ordinary, a dark pair of trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, his usual teaching attire. It felt impossible to speak, but surely, with that look, he had said it all.

[Faith Augustin]

"You're bleeding" she said, quietly, her voice gentle and concerned. "I can help you" and if she allowed it, Faith handed Elyna the knitting and nodded her head encouragingly "If you do it, you'll heal. It creates, you see. Here" she placed her hands over Elyna's, quietly and carefully "In. Round. Over. Off. That's all. In. Round. Over. Off.. that's it" with a radiant smile Faith watched as the jumper for Malcolm grew, developing at an impossible speed. "I like to sew. Coffin linings. I make coffin linings or I used to I think. And clothes for dead people. You have to cut them up the back you know. The clothes.... not the people" she added the last sheepishly and with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. As she knelt there with the Sad Lady, Faith felt a tickling creep up the back of her neck, like there was something there, but she shook her head and focused.

"What happened? Why are you bleeding?" she asked, putting her hand on Elyna's leg and staunching the bleeding. She wrapped it with the coffin lining that her thoughts had created here, moving carefully but methodically. "It's soaking through your trousers, and that will mean that you need to wash them. I can do that for you, if you need me to. I like to be useful, it's my job you see" she tied the coffin lining, holding it tight and pulling it so that it kept a constant pressure on the leg. "No one took my choice away, Mistress." that was what Jamal had taught her she had to call all free women, and in her mind that was where she was, at least in this moment.

though, there it was again
That itch
Like there was someone there.

she glanced

and saw no one

"I was born a slave. I have never had choice. The owners and the masters gave me everything, even my names" she explained "It must be very hard to lose freedom, but I have never tasted it" she explained, but the Sad Lady's definition of love? Faith looked up at her and she shook her head, firmly "That isn't love, Mistress. Love causes you to grow, to soar. To be more than you were alone. It pushes you to be better, to strive and to work and to always seek to find a better way to be the best you can be. Love doesn't detract, that isn't love" and in that moment, though she did not say it, Faith did not speak of any mortal, nor yet even a Mortalborn. It was of Famula that she spoke, and her love for Her.

The Sad Lady put the ring down and she spoke. And in that moment, in those words, Faith's heart broke for her. "But, Mistress, you are free. You belong to no one. If you do not want to feel what you feel, then what you feel is not love. As surely as....."

And then, as sh spoke, she felt again that feeling and she turned and glanced at the movement in her peripheral vision. "Oh!" she whispered. As she did, as the ring slipped out of sight and Faith felt herself pull back, like she was sitting at the apex of a triangle, where Malcolm and the Sad Lady sat and looked at each other, eyes locked in pain and grief, she lowered her eyes to the floor. She did not belong here in this place where there was so much that was so exquisitely personal. She was a voyeur to what should be between the two of them and yet she could not leave and she could not stop seeing.

So Faith did all that she could think to do. She closed her eyes.

[Elyna]

The Skyrider nodded, she was bleeding and her leg hurt. Still, she picked up the needles she was offered and frowned at them. The woman tried her hardest to follow the instructions but the wool knotted instantly. Her head started to throb slowly, a headache spreading along the temple and down the back of her neck. It just made no sense. None.

“I-I don’t need you to do anything, thank you.” She pushed the needles back into more expert hands and tightened the knot of fabric around her leg. It didn’t seem to stop the bleeding though. The wound stung enough to pull at her mind, threatening to wake her despite her bittersweet exhaustion. The woman embraced death with the same attitude as she approached love. Simple attention. You either loved or you did not. You were dead, or you were alive. From what she said, Elyna could deduce she was an undertaker of some kind, but to be a slave for life? To never have those choices? Something in Elyna recoiled in disgust, but then she’d had a privileged life. More so than most in the world. She’d not only been a free child, she was the daughter of a Noble family.

“Love… it can make you fly but it also shoots you down from the sky. It makes you vulnerable and easy to hurt,” she replied quietly, “it’s a hole in armour, in a defensive wall. If it raises you up so high, Faith, then it can also drop you to your lowest and leave you there.” It was quiet a speech from the usually taciturn woman and looked up as the shadow stretched over them both.
Malcolm bent and collected his ring. The board behind him flickered in a familiar story.

If you do not want to feel what you feel, then what you feel is not love.

The words repeated in her mind as she held his sea-green gaze. It was love. Nothing hurt quite like it. She knew this gaze and the silent question. He’d looked at her this way before, in Krome. He’d asked then why she’d rejected him. He was asking the same again. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sound of her own breath and thundering heart. Finally, the Skyrider wet her lips and forced herself to look ahead. Gaze landing on the raven-haired girl.

“She loves you,” Elyna explained, “and her love is sweeter than any I could possibly possess…is she your lover? Is she another wife?” The words came soft and she tried to withhold the accusation. Elyna shivered and drew her legs up, wincing as she did. I am yours, she thought, but were you ever mine?

[Malcolm]

Humans were strange creatures, they kept everything they treasured inside of something else. Books went on a bookshelf, jewels in a box, words in a song, flowers in a vase, animals in a paddock, and slaves in chains. Love was too big to contain, and so it touched everything it came into contact with. Love made roses redder, the sun warmer, and the days longer. Love did not fit, it could not be defined, especially not in words by anyone it meant anything to. So love had been turned into a symbol, the eternal loop of a gold ring, the storm in the eye of a pearl, the repurposed gift of an absent father and a long dead mother.
Love could not be given back once it was finished with, or set aside out of convenience. One could not go to sleep with love and wake up to find it gone, yet love must be justified and those who dare utter the truth of its existence, held accountable in ledger and in word. Humans always felt the need to put constraints on love, timeframes, prices, restrictions... You must love only one and only till death, love was a contract. A ring through a bull's nose would not stop him from turning his head or servicing other cows, but it did its job, feeding the illusion that everything could be kept, that anything could be owned solely, even love.

Malcolm looked across at the raven haired woman, failing to draw any connection between her and the world beyond Emea. The knot in his brow tightened as his gaze fell on Elyna once more, what kind of a question was that and at such a time as this?
"You are my mine," he told her. "Mine to love from across this room or this world until it is I who fails to draw breath. You don't choose when, who, and for how long I love, you can only choose to accept or refuse to acknowledge that my love for you exists, just as it does for Vanessa, Marcus, Vaughn, Ava, those who are long dead, and those I am yet to meet but have already pledged my love to," he spoke then of their unborn child.
Malcolm closed the ring in his hand tightly as his features softened. "If you do not want my love, then let it be akin to silence, and live only in your shadow."

[Faith Augustin]

She was kneeling on the floor and she had her head down and her eyes closed. Ironically, it was what Jamal had called "position one" and was used by him regularly for how she should be when she was not working. When he ate, she knelt like this next to him. When he slept, if she was not permitted sleep she knelt, like this and waited for him to wake. If he wished to prove his dominance and control over her, then she knelt like this at his command in front of others. It was something that he had used a hundred thousand times and the Owners in Athart a hundred million before him, to humiliate her.

And never once had it felt like this.

Not this bad.

Never, once, in all the punishments, humiliations and techniques used to break her, had she felt like this

For a brief few seconds, she had been utterly delighted. Malcolm was here. He was here and maybe now he would see the Sad Lady and he would see that Faith was helping her (and making him a jumper, although that seemed less important) and he would realise that Faith was good. Her heart leapt with delight at the sight of him. But then, he looked so hurt, and the Sad Lady spoke.

"She loves you" Sad Lady said and Faith wanted to scream. Why, why would she do that? Why would she tell him? It wasn't something that he could know about, she didn't.... it wasn't something that he could ever reciprocate and, in that moment, in that one awful moment and those three words, Elyna unwittingly tore away every iota of hope and every dream of a different life that Faith had. Because whilst he was unaware, she could hope, she could dream, she could pretend but here she was kneeling on the floor in his classroom and listening unheeded and out of place as his wife (she must be his wife, that was what the ring meant), his beautiful and exquisite wife who was... everything that the slave girl was not... she told him how Faith felt. The rest of Elyna's words she did not hear for the blood that rushed to her face roared in her ears. Her heart beat near out of her chest and she prayed to Famula to let her die, please, just take her now for this humiliation, in front of him she could not live one second more.

As Elyna spoke those three words to Malcolm, Faith let out a low moan. Kneeling in the rags that Jamal had dressed her in, the Venora brand burning on her shoulder, she kept her eyes closed and lifted her hands to cover her ears. Her face was burning a deep red and she scrunched her eyes tight against the sights. She couldn't bear it if she heard his laughter or, worse still, his dismissal.... she couldn't hear that. She would die here and now and it would be more than any punishment she had ever had. Because here, in the darkness, her hopes of freedom had spilled out on to the floor and shattered by the simple expedient of a stranger uttering three simple words. The freedom that she had dreamt of was not freedom from slavery, she could not conceive of that, but freedom of quite a different kind. To learn, to live, to love and to be allowed to love. But it was no longer hers to dream of, for it had been laid bare.

So, she knelt. She did not hear Malcolm's reply and she tried to make herself as small as she could whilst she prayed fervently to her beloved Immortal that this pain, which Faith would swear was more than she had ever felt (and she had been tortured by professionals), be taken from her in the sweet embrace of death.

[Elyna]

The words fell around her like drops of rain on a sunny day. But it was the low moan of pain that had the young woman cringing. In her own selfish agony she had hurt the girl. Elyna had shared a secret that was not her own, in her determination to pursue her own pain to its bitter end. The sound caused her throat to close and she turned her face away from them both, ashamed. The Skyrider had a kind heart, but despair had blinded her as it drove her to reckless words and actions.

It should be so easy, Elyna. Frustration had torn the words from him. In many ways it was. The choice between Malcolm and any other was a simple one that took less than a heartbeat. But the choice between loving Malcolm, and saving herself? Saving him from her and the disaster she was making of her own life? He deserved the simplicity of devotion that Faith offered. He deserved to be adored which is why she’d told him in the first place. If the woman was not his lover, then maybe she should be.

Her thoughts were a jumbled confusion, looping ideas and words knotted together like the wool on knitting needles. She pulled at the threads one by one to try and make any sense, and failed. The woman stretched out her legs and returned to her feet, using the wall for balance and with the motions slow and painful.

“You cannot…you cannot love us all in the same breath,” she warned and forced herself to meet his expression. Her heart thundered in her chest and the air came short in her lungs. Eyes wide with fear she studied him like a stranger. Marcus had torn away so many of her memories with his knife and the wound hadn’t yet had time to heal. He had stripped away the solid idea of Malcolm and left a shaken sense of self behind. The woman wanted no part of love.

Vanessa. The word rang out in the classroom and Elyna faltered. Malcolm would recognise his son’s voice even if Faith only heard only a man speaking, despite her covered ears. The horror of Elyna’s expression was quickly replaced by pain as she reached, frantic for her right arm, pulling the sleeve away from feverish skin. The name was being written over delicate flesh like a pen on paper, only it sank through like a burn down through the muscle as the woman pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back her shriek. She was dreaming after all, and love branded her a fool.

Marcus. Elyna twisted, no longer able to contain the shout of pain as she tried to stop the invisible hands from carving the list of names, that Malcolm had provided, into her flesh. As though she could wave away the pain, like chasing off a bee. She dropped back to her knees, choking on her scream as she was pulled from the realm.

***

The woman sat as she woke, panting with hair slick against her skull and cheeks sticky with tears. Frantic hands smoothed over the skin of her arms, neck and back, where she’d felt the wicked knife sinking in. Fingertips touched, with delicate care the wound on her leg and she flinched. It throbbed, burning as it healed and she let out the air trapped in her lungs and sagged. Staring out of the tiny window. Elyna curled up on her side, and wrapped a hand over the budding growth of new life and watched the distance stars. Her ring pressed gently against her bottom lip.