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In the dark privacy of her quarters, with no-one around but the droid standing motionless at the foot of her bed, apprentice Deskyl meditates. Remembering how to establish a telepathic link is hard, and doing it is even harder, but she thinks in this case it will be worth it.
Hello? It's more a sense of presence than a proper word, easily mistaken for just another thought by someone not expecting such a thing.
Reassuring presence.
It'll cut out anyway if I get too far away - you can meditate and look for me but that only might work. But it'll come back on its own, and it'll only be a few days.
He'll survive until then. There's a limit to what can happen to him in a few days.
(Unless he kills him. But if there are others still alive he doesn't think he will.)
love you too.
He tries to make his eyes stay shut, so he can sleep alongside her.
The droid wakes her, when it becomes obvious she's not going to wake at the usual time on her own. She waves her off and lies in bed, mulling.
–no, if you were bad at this you would have tried something earlier and been dead.
He can't explain the knot of frustration that's forming, but it's there. He doesn't know what to tell her, either.
Well.
She stays curled in her lumpsome ball; the droid feeds her again when breakfast comes.
Are you all right, Ma'am?, she signs.
No.
Is there anything I can do?
Going.
Oh. She sits on the bed and takes her hand.
We have travelled through the darkness, the droid's hands dance with the poetry,
Thou and I, for many days;
Till we wondered at the sunshine,
When at length we felt its rays.
Chill and lonely was the pathway,
Only lighted by the snow,
With the cutting east wind only
To declare how we should go.
On our right, the frozen river,
Where the drowned lay asleep;
On our left, the rocky mountain,
So precipitously steep;
All around the gloomy shadows
Of the failures gone before;
While the leafless branches whispered,
We should do no less, no more.
We should falter and should stumble,
And should fail to reach the end;
And should die in the beginning—
Die together, O my friend!
Die together?—'twas a jewel
Which they threw us, for a stone:
Come what might, we could remember
That we should not be alone;
So, with hands entwined the closer,
We pressed on against the blast;
And we bided for the daylight,
And the daylight came at last -
Crying. She's crying.
It lasts a while; she's not even really trying to calm herself down. She feels better when she's done, though, calm and centered and light, for the moment. Love you, she signs to the droid. Love you.
Love you too.
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