>>6335527# # # # # #
You detach from the Stilladìa, and have to gather your thoughts.
Never your favourite past-time.
You sigh, holding your burnt hand.
Ansàrra’s abandonment has left you bereft of warmth.
Bereft of sense.
If it had not been for Carnaval’s kindness, you probably would have lost yourself to pain and fever in the cell.
And if it had not been for the Stilladìa’s own care, so mundane, so practical, you would have no hope of ever recovering your hand.
Because that is what, beyond any doubt, has happened. You have been left alone the moment you stepped in Madua. And Ansàrra’s own flames have burned you.
Seared your flesh so badly it cracked and rotted and twisted into a charred five-lobed stick. And the pain has been present with you always, a bandage of searing nails and shards of glass to kiss and lick at what remained of your skin, for eight days and eight nights.
The memory of the pain is strong enough to make you shiver.
You lean back, away from Helias and the Stilladìa, and you touch the wall.
The wall of your cell.
Blinking, you find yourself—not standing, but sitting.
In front of her crimson eyes.
In front of the cameo, which keeps spinning spinning spinning like a top. Between you.
“Welcome back,” she greets you.
Helias is there.
Behind her, his black hand gently kneading her shoulders, as she looks down.
She looks immensely tired.
You can empathize. It must not have been easy for her, either.
“Can I do anything for Willow, too?”
She stirs from her malaise.
Her gaze locks into yours—her pale face lit up from the twin white furnaces that are her pupils. Now that you are not in her memories anymore the world is dark again.
And Ansàrra is still nowhere.
[cont.]
