Chapter Text
There are many kinds of quiet. The solemn hush of a graveyard. The expansive hum of a library. The soft rustle in the middle of the forest. They share a commonality; they are spaces for the living to visit and gain something in return.
The hospital room was filled with a different quiet. A weighted waiting; the hesitant soundlessness between exhale and inhale. There were machines and monitors around a narrow bed, but they were all silent. There were people, three of descending ages, arranged in a huddled u-shape but none spoke.
Each person was focused on the bed’s occupant, on the slow, nearly imperceptible rise and fall of the frail chest beneath a brightly pattern blanket cheerfully out of place in the otherwise bland space.
Even the occupant watched herself, leaning over the metal rail encircling her slumbering form with an ease she hadn’t felt in years. A smile stretched the worn lines of her face as she peered down, as she witnessed herself in repose for the first time.
“Look at all of those. Aren’t they beautiful? Some women… well, I suppose some men, too, want to smooth away their wrinkles. Erase them.” She shook her head and tutted, a familiar though invisible motion to those in the room. “But I was so happy to have mine. I could read every moment of my life in them whenever I looked in the mirror.”
With another gentle tsk, she directed her smile at the figure standing behind those gathered close in vigil. Vision no longer cloudy and blurred by the passage of decades, she saw clearly the bright copper-colored curls and freckled brown skin. Eyes a few shades darker, rich like good tea, looked back with an endless depth somehow more comforting than unsettling. In younger days, Gertie would have called her a lovely young woman, but she was mindful now, her little Lawrence had taught her, not to make such assumptions. Oh, she would miss the things they had yet to teach her.
Still.
“I had such a good life,” she relished, and the words were followed by a sweet blissful warmth, as if a summer breeze were sweeping out even the memory of aches and pains.
The figure returned her smile in a face ageless and beautiful. Unwrinkled, Gertie noted, but nobody was perfect.
“You did,” the figure agreed. Their hands rested neatly at their sides, their body motionless in the simple black clothes they wore. There was no sense of urgency or hurry, no hint of impatience, but Gertie hadn’t lived to be one hundred and one without knowing when it was time to leave a party.
Still.
She looked back over at the others, at the faces of her children twisted with the start of grief. Every hurt they had ever felt in their lives was imprinted upon her heart as surely as the years had been carved into her face and that moment was no different. Only now she had no band-aid to smooth out, no kiss to soothe, no silly song to distract from the pain. Then again, they hadn’t needed that from her in some time, had they?
There was a touch on her shoulder, the barest pressure and the same surge of warmth flowed through her again. She sighed, wistful.
“They’ll be sad,” she lamented, though she knew there was no alternative. One hundred and one was long enough, even if it wasn’t.
“They will,” the figure assented again, voice even and steady in a way that made Gertie think of mountains against a wide backdrop of sky. “But they’ll remember. And be happy as well.”
Gertie let her gaze complete one final circuit of the faces she could never forget. “Well, I suppose that’s all one can hope for.” She shifted, moving unconsciously to face the door in the same movement as the figure. “What’s your name, child?”
Because whatever it was, and Gertie certainly had her suspicions, anything with skin that unlined was a child.
The figure continued to smile serenely as they took their first steps together. Gertie was dimly aware of a gasp behind her, followed by murmuring cries. A small part of her ached to turn around but it was overridden by a need to move forward.
“My name is Jade.”
Outside the door the hallway of the hospital was much as it had been when Gertie had been wheeled in, how many hours, days, or weeks before. She couldn’t remember. There was no reason to.
“Well, Jade. Where are we going?” she asked, a little pool of excitement gathering in the center of her chest, the way it always had whenever she had gone somewhere new. How long it had been since she had felt it!
The end of the hallway was bright, far more than the washed-out glow of the overhead lights could account for. They ambled toward it, side by side, and Gertie saw, with breath taking clarity, the day she had walked down the aisle with Larry, her hand tucked in the crook of his big arm as all the world lay out before them. She saw the birth of each other her children, of grandchildren, and a million memories in between.
“To the next. May I ask you something, Gertie?” There was a wonder in Jade’s tone, a kind of longing that sounded out of place, all things considered, but reminded her of a thousand instances of can I ask a question, Nana?
“Of course, my dear, of course.”
“What did you like best?”
Gertie tilted her head in thought as they shuffled along, the walls of the hospital growing less substantial with every step. Such a simple question with the impossibility of a wrong answer. She went with the first thing that came into her mind.
“Hot toddies. I could certainly go for one right about now.” She sent Jade a sidelong glance and in the glow from the light all around them, the contours of her face softened with youthful ingenuity. “Don’t suppose there will be any where we’re going?”
Extending one arm forward, Jade smiled in a go-ahead gesture. “You’ll have to see for yourself.”
##
Jade liked the hospital.
Humans, she understood, did not. Which made sense. To humans, hospitals were a place of sickness, of pain, of death. A vortex of frustration, panic, and grief. The fact they were also places of new life and recovery seemed overshadowed by all the things that, to a human, could go wrong.
But Jade was not a human.
To her, the hospital was a nexus of bright minds, of order within chaos that she meandered through, unseen, unburdened. She saw the drive of will against inevitability. The desire to continue, to remain in the world. She could not think of a greater endorsement of life than the sheer tenacity to which humans clung to it.
What must it be like to be alive, if they would go to such lengths to stay? It fascinated her to listen to their thoughts as they buzzed about, moving from room to room. The discussions had, the arguments, the conversations, all about life and its continuation.
The bypass is scheduled for tomorrow morning, thank God Braun is out, that man is such an ass—
I assure you, Mr. Neihiem, your life is not over, there is in fact sugar free ice cream that does not taste like moldy cardboard—
I don’t like the numbers, I think we should try something else. There’s a new experimental treatment—
“—honestly, with the number of times you yelled at us as kids for not wearing our helmets, it’s kind of hilarious.” The voice, sonorous and filled to the brim with the kind of sharp humor Jade often heard humans converse with, burst forth from the room as if it had kicked open the door.
“Kit.” The admonishment that followed immediately behind it had a tiredness to it, a hint of repetition suggesting it was far from the first time the specific single syllable had been uttered.
“What? I had to miss Graydon Hastur’s eighth birthday party, which granted maybe not the biggest loss, for going around the block without mine. She goes across a two-lane highway to get face cream without hers and you’re gonna Kit me? She is so grounded.”
“You can’t ground mom, Kit. She’s fifty-five. She’s an adult.”
“I’m fifty-three and I’m right here you know,” a third voice, precise, level, and undercut with a layer of guilt pushing it into testy, interrupted the back and forth of the first two. Or, attempted to.
“If she were an adult, Airk, she would have ordered it online and had someone Uber it over like a normal person instead of getting on her bike and riding four miles across a highway. A highway, Airk! Do you know what a highway is Airk?”
“Of course, I know what a highway is, Kit. I drive on one all the time.”
“Ok great, well do you see a lot of bicyclists on the highway? No, right? Probably because there’s a lot of cars, which, coincidentally, she could have also chosen to take to the store, if she was so het up on going.” The first voice rose in both pitch and volume, driven upwards on a current of anger, but Jade could hear the fear feeding into it as well. She did not realize she was drifting from the hall until she found herself at the edge of the doorframe looking in.
A pretty, older woman with long golden reddish locks streaked with grey sat upright in the room’s single bed, one leg lifted and casted, the other tucked beneath a blanket. There were scrapes and bruises marring the skin of her face and the hands primly folded in her lap.
“I don’t appreciate being spoken of as if I am not here,” she reiterated to the interest of apparently no one.
Like opponents in a boxing match, two others stood on either side of her. Furthest from Jade was a young man, light hair reaching his smoothly shaven chin. He pushed it back from his face in a frustrated motion that looked well-practiced. His eyes, when he opened them after squeezing them shut briefly, were a dreamy blue green.
“Listen Kit, I get that you’re upset. I am also upset. But mom’s okay, all right? That’s the important thing and I don’t think ragging on her right now is super helpful.”
From her current angle, all Jade could see of who she assumed was ‘Kit’ was the rigid length of their back and the short brown hairs tickling the nape of their neck. But the way their shoulders were hunched nearly to their ears and the curl of their fingertips into the meat of their triceps spoke volumes about their current mood.
One of their hands flung out towards the woman on the bed. “All right? Her leg is broken in like six places. That seems all right to you?” Their head turned and they finally addressed the woman herself. “Does that seem all right to you, mom? What if it had been your head instead of your leg?” If Jade had had a heart, she thought it might have broken with the anguish pulsing through the rapid-fire questions.
The woman’s face, previously a study in indignant annoyance softened with contrition and Jade knew she was not the only one moved by the message beneath the ire.
“Kit—” the woman began, the notes of apology already singing forth.
But Kit’s hands went into the air, palms forward as they stepped back, and they shook their head to forestall its appearance. “I… need a minute. I’m gonna… get something from the cafeteria. I’ll be back.”
They jabbed one finger at the young man. “Don’t let her go anywhere without a helmet,” they warned before spinning toward the door, giving Jade her first view of their face.
The curiosity that had drawn Jade closer gave her no preparation. She had seen an uncountable number of sunsets and sunrises, had shepherded souls from every inch of the Earth, had catalogued every feature that had ever been sculpted by chance. And yet, when Kit turned and stormed for the exit, Jade found herself stunned, as if seeing for the very first time.
Eyes, a brilliant stormy blue, somehow met hers, somehow saw her without seeing. There was a second, an impossible stutter in Kit’s step, before she sailed through the door past where Jade stood, dumbstruck by a feeling she had no name for. As if tethered, Jade’s head swiveled to follow Kit’s jerky movements down the hall, watched as she made an irritated half-circle before shoving through another door and out of sight.
Barely registering the thought, Jade blinked and was there, in the cavernous stairwell listening to the echoing clomp of Kit’s footsteps clattering down until they abruptly stopped.
“Fuck!” The curse exploded in an exhalation of emotions strong enough to form their own universe. It was followed by a groan, short and cut off, before there was a quiet thump. As Jade slowly descended, some unknown part of her urging her onward even as every other part wondered why, she found Kit seated on one of the steps, head buried in arms crossed over knees bouncing with unrestrained motion.
She’s okay, she’s okay, she’s okay.
I can’t—that was too close—I can’t lose her, too. She’s okay.
I can’t. I’m not ready. What if she hit her head? What if no one had stopped? What—I—
I didn’t say I’m sorry. Jesus what if she had—and I hadn’t said—I can’t. I can’t do it again.
Jade sank into a crouch in front of Kit but could do nothing but stare as the thoughts rolled past and over and against one another. She saw her hand stretching out before she realized she had moved; before she could touch the glossy strands of hair she had been reaching for, Kit shifted, raising her head enough for those blue eyes to stare out from the shadows of her breathtaking face.
And somehow, even with advance knowledge this time, Jade was stunned again, caught like a comet in the grip of the sun’s gravity. She felt a pull, strong and insistent, and could not comprehend the reason.
Kit sniffed, a surprisingly loud sound in the empty space. Her eyes were damp, her cheeks dry, and still Jade felt a compulsion to brush the back of her fingers against them, as if to brush away tears unshed. To try and comprehend what the pale skin would feel like. Smooth? Rough? Cool? Warm? She had no sense memory for what any of those words meant, only the vague definition of meaning that she found deeply unsatisfying in a way knowledge never had before.
At the same time, she heard Kit’s thoughts begin to slow.
Fuck, pull yourself together Kit. You’re okay. She’s okay. Airk’s okay. Everything is okay. There’s no reason to be freaking out in an empty stairwell oh shit I hope it’s empty, fuck—
Jade lifted her head back in a mimicry of Kit; they both looked and listened for a long, tense moment.
Quiet. No one else but a young woman and her silent, invisible witness.
Jade returned her gaze to Kit and watched as the woman continued to grow calmer, steadier, the angry storm of emotions about her dissipating. And yet Jade remained, reluctant to move on, not at all certain why. She could not help but stare into Kit’s eyes, irrationally hoping for the same spark or flash as before.
But it did not come.
And Jade knew the word for the feeling in her stomach, even as she tried to brush it aside.
Disappointment.
##
Kit eyed the coffee vending machine standing a few feet inside the hospital’s cafeteria and wondered, on a scale of one to ten, how much she would regret imbibing any of the contents it offered. Was it a this-dial-goes-to-eleven situation? She couldn’t imagine how it couldn’t be, but her brain was extremely insistent in its need for caffeine, in any manner, as soon as possible.
There was a headache brewing in the back of her head, as vile and acidic as the beverage percolating in the metal box in front of her was bound to be. A byproduct of her thankfully unobserved meltdown in the stairwell and all she really, really wanted to do was be in her backyard at home where she could take out her longsword and go through forms until her muscles burned and her mind drained of the lingering soup of panic and fear.
Actually, caffeine was probably the very last thing she should consume, she had already spent the entire morning in a state of extreme agitation, coffee was only going to make it worse and—
She abruptly became aware of the vague sensation of someone standing behind her, caught a glimpse of shape out of the corner of her eye. Fuck how long had she been standing there staring like a moron who couldn’t pick between bad decisions?
“Sorry, let me get out of your way,” she apologized, hastily stepping to the side to allow the newcomer access to the machine. She should get back to mom’s room before Sorsha had them start paging her over the intercom and it was the Mall Incident all over again.
“You’re not in anyone’s way, Kit.”
Even if she had not been addressed by name Kit would have revolved in the direction of the lightly accented words, something in the melodious sounds capturing her attention. They came from the mouth of an attractive woman, not much older than herself though frankly Kit was kind of shit at guessing ages, with lovely brown eyes standing a little closer than—
A very attractive woman, Kit’s mind reassessed quickly as her eyes roamed, taking in a riot of red hair neatly tucked back on one side with a single braid and a quiet smile that somehow radiated reassurance and made little firecrackers shoot off in Kit’s stomach.
And those eyes. Kit felt her gaze pulled back to them and for the first time completely understood the phrase lost in one’s eyes. She wracked her brain for a name to go with that incredible face—there was no way she could have forgotten a prior meeting—and yet, as Kit continued to stare, all she could come up with was wow.
It wasn’t until the young woman’s smooth brow furrowed that Kit realized she had probably drifted from polite appreciative admiring into weirdo creepy gawking. She darted her gaze away, ping ponging it around the room—trifecta of vending machines (coffee, juice, snacks), a few brave souls lining up at slightly steaming steel trays, nobody else nearby to witness this interaction thankfully—before she couldn’t help but be drawn back, like a magnet.
“Oh, ha, good. Just. You know. Trying to maximize my bad decisions this morning,” she joked feebly and then internally winced because good, great start Kit, best foot forward as usual.
The woman’s head tilted to one side. “Why would you make bad decisions?” she asked with a sincerity that kept the inquisition from feeling like mockery. Kit dragged a hand through her hair and rolled her eyes before she could think to stop herself.
“I ask myself that every day, honestly,” she muttered. And since that definitely felt like too much for an in-front-of-a-vending-machine conversation, she hurried to add, “Are you here—” Kit paused, managed to pull her eyes away from the woman’s face long enough to quickly sweep over the rest of her form, hoping for a further clue that might jog her memory as to how or where they had previously met. The long black coat over black shirt and pants didn’t exactly scream doctor and she didn’t have any obvious injuries, though Kit was well aware that didn’t mean much, so she finished with what she hoped was the best-case scenario “—visiting?”
The woman’s smile deepened, and Kit was enraptured by the small play of muscles as they moved. “I’m visiting with you.”
Kit felt her lips curve automatically, even as her eyebrows lifted. Was that—that was—she was definitely being hit on, right? The jitters in her stomach moved up her spine. Granted, Kit didn’t generally have the best awareness of when attention was directed at her, was usually more of a flirter rather than flirtee but that seemed obvious. Right?
Why couldn’t she remember this woman’s name? She was good with names. Maybe not as good as Airk but good enough to navigate a myriad of business events without disaster. Mostly.
The thought of her twin had all the feelings of guilt and frustration a beautiful face had so easily swept aside come rushing back. She huffed out a long sigh.
“Sorry, I’m probably pretty shit company at the moment,” she noted. If this woman was trying to hit on her, might as well let her know not to get her hopes up.
“Why do you say that?”
It was odd. At first, Kit had no intention of elaborating. Why in the world would she blather on about her volatile attitude and rocky familial relationships to an acquaintance whose name she couldn’t recall, especially when said acquaintance was gorgeous and possibly interested.
But the way the woman was watching her, patiently, her face encouraging but not expectant struck something in Kit. She knew if she declined to answer it wouldn’t change her demeanor one bit. There’d be no resentment or fury or disappointment, however vague.
And so, the words fell from her mouth without a struggle. “Because I just spent the last like, hour, yelling at my mother and my brother because she made a bad choice and got hurt and I keep thinking about if it had been worse, if she had… if she had died and if feels like he doesn’t get how serious that is, how bad it could have been and I—”
A soft press against the side of her arm distracted Kit from the panic she could feel blooming sharp and icy in her gut once again. Involuntarily she took a deep breath in the middle of her spiraling worry and a warmth followed the air down into her lungs, radiated outwards, relaxing the tension she hadn’t even realized she had been holding on to.
“Your mother is strong. She’ll be okay.”
Kit blinked, a little dizzied by the sudden shift from tempest to calm. She heard the echo of Airk’s earlier mom’s okay but this declaration of surety had none of the anxious worry she now recognized had been layered under her brother’s tone.
“Yeah, she is,” she heard herself agreeing, both verbally and mentally. “She will be.” Her mother was one of the strongest people she knew, had been through so much in her life already. They, thankfully, had the resources to aid her recovery and if Kit had to cement glue a helmet to her mother’s head, she was prepared to do that.
She was pretty sure she could convince Airk to help.
“When you think of your mother, what’s the first memory that comes to your mind?”
This had to have been the strangest encounter Kit had ever had. One half of her was side eyeing the weirdness of talking about personal things with a stranger and the other half was happily chatting away like it was the first day of kindergarten. She couldn’t remember the last person she had felt so comfortable in the presence of who wasn’t related to her. Even if a third half of her kept trying to follow the line of freckles down the side of the woman’s neck where they disappeared beneath the collar of her shirt.
Like before, Kit found herself compelled to answer. She expected the first thing to jump forward to be one of her and Sorsha’s epic arguments over the years, one of the million times they had butted heads, or been at opposing ends of a discussion.
But it was something older. “One year, when I was a kid, maybe seven or eight? I was sick for Christmas. I remember being in bed, miserable. Couldn’t even think about opening presents. My mom came in and she had this little stuffed toy fox. It had a little key in it that if you wound it up, it played music. And she wound it up for me and stayed until I fell asleep.”
Kit swallowed against a sudden burn in her throat. “I used to sleep with it every night for years.”
“What happened to it?”
She found herself wondering the same thing. “I’m not sure. I guess… it might be somewhere at mom’s house.”
“Kit, hey. There you are.”
Still caught in memory, absently making a mental note of where in Sorsha’s house to look, Kit rotated toward the sound of Airk’s voice. She felt a burst of fondness at the sight of his quick-step, a not-quite-a-jog scurrying that reminded her of countless other times he had trailed after her, paying lip service to their mother’s admonishment of no running in the house while calling out hey, kit, where are you going can I come?
Older brother, her ass.
“Here I am,” she agreed, waiting until he drew close enough so she didn’t have to project her apology to the entire floor. “Listen, I’m sorry I freaked out. It’s just—”
“No, no, I get it. I do,” he interrupted, with all the earnestness she always seemed to forget he carried, “I was scared, too. Still scared actually. It was bad. It was like—”
“—Dad,” she finished, and they nodded together in a mirroring movement.
“Yeah.”
She exhaled sharply and rubbed one hand over her face. “It’s kind of worse, actually, isn’t it? Because we know everything that’s going on. Instead of… just being told.”
“Being an adult sucks,” he sympathized, the ultimate truth of the universe.
“Tell me about it.”
“Are you ready to go back up?” he asked, jerking a thumb behind him. “Mom was worried.”
Kit felt herself bristle and made a concerted effort to shake her shoulders loose. “Mom is going to get a taste of her own medicine for once.” She paused, then sighed at the niggle of guilt squirming in her gut. “I want to stop by the gift shop first. They probably have something sappy and stupid I can get as an apology. She loves that stuff. Oh, wait.”
She turned, intent on thanking the woman for the kind words and for keeping her from ingesting the likely bitter dregs of radioactive sludge disguised as coffee. And also, maybe get her name and number if she had been reading the situation correctly.
But the woman was gone, no sign of her nearby. She must have slipped away in the short time it had taken Airk to completely blow up her spot.
“Fuck,” she mumbled, because didn’t it just figure. Kit rubbed at her arm and could almost feel the ghost of the woman’s touch lingering.
“You okay?” Airk asked and she resisted the sisterly urge to cuff him on the back of the head.
“Yeah. Come on.” As they started out of the cafeteria, she remembered Airk’s superhuman power when it came to name recollection, especially in regard to the ladies. “Do you remember ever meeting a woman, around our age, with red curly hair and amazing eyes?”
“You mean Elora?”
“No, brown eyes. And Jesus, Airk, I know who Elora is. You dated her for three fucking years.”
He shrugged. “You’re the one who kept saying you were wiping our relationship from your mind.”
“No, I said I was wiping finding you two in the hot tub from my mind because gross.” She resented the reminder.
“Which time?”
“God, Airk, I’m having lunch with her this week.”
Like a dog, he perked up; she could practically see his ears twitch. “Oh? Is she still single?”
“I don’t know. And no, I will not ask. I’m bleaching the very thought out of my brain.”
“Good luck because apparently you’re not super good at that.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
##
“Something on your mind, Jade?”
It was a question Jade was well accustomed to hearing, particularly as posed by the lean-faced figure who sat beside her on the ledge. They shared a precarious perch hundreds of feet above the bustling lights of the city and the frenzied movements of its denizens as easily as two friends would share a park bench. Something on your mind might very well have been Ballantine’s favorite question to ask her if Jade were to look back over the entire length of their existence.
If time held any meaning to them.
But for some reason, this time, it felt very different. Or perhaps it was her response that was atypical, for she paused to consider in a way she never had before. Why she paused she couldn’t say, for the thoughts in her mind were not forbidden, as no things were forbidden, but they seemed almost… too big to begin with.
Ballantine clocked her hesitation and his vulture-like neck craned in her direction. “Jade?” There was no change in the register of his deep baritone, nothing to hint at concern, and yet she understood it to be there. As close to concern as one of their kind could get. She frowned as she tried to line up her thoughts in order of size.
“Have you ever been seen by a human?” After a second, she added, “When you did not wish to be seen? And not by one you had come to collect.”
“Seen? No.” Like his voice, Ballantine’s expression did not alter. Although he answered immediately, Jade had no doubt as to the depth he had considered her ponderance. “Perceived, many times. Some humans look more closely than others, with senses other than their eyes.”
Jade was sure she comprehended what he meant and was equally sure it was not what she had experienced. She considered again, her frown deepening.
“Have you ever…” The word stuck in her throat, as if misshapen, and it brought with it again that strange fleeting sense of reticence. She forged ahead, searching for the missing piece that would align her understanding once more. “…connected with one?”
This time Ballantine did shift, his head retreating back ever so faintly. “With a human?” he reiterated, and Jade nodded despite a rapid desire to exit the conversation. “How do you mean, exactly?”
Jade found herself unable to meet his continual unwavering gaze, her eyes falling to the scurry of activity below. But instead of the infinite array of colors that encompassed a mass of humanity, she saw only the shockingly bold blue of Kit’s angry glare in the endless second before she had marched past. Then again, in the stairwell where the shimmer of tears had turned them nearly translucent. Once more, when they had met in front of the machine that dispensed bad decisions.
At the last thought, Jade’s body moved in a way she did not recall it having done before. If she were human, she might have said she squirmed. But she wasn’t human and so she shook her head to let the very concept flitter off.
“There was a woman today. She was… furious. Having an argument with her family. When she moved past me, she looked at—I thought she looked at me.” Jade shook her head again because now that she said it aloud, it was silly. “I thought she saw me.”
“Did you want her to see you?”
Jade felt a strange urge to raise her shoulders toward her ears and resisted. “I… spoke to her. Later,” she admitted, skirting his question a bit. Not sure why she felt she needed to.
“Why?”
“I wanted to help her.”
“Did you?”
She recalled, vividly, the way Kit’s mouth had pulled back into a smile. The curve of her lips, the straight teeth behind, peeking out. She found herself unable to think of anything else but the fact the tip of her own finger seemed designed to trace the line of that smile perfectly.
“I think so,” she breathed, because she could see it, the gentle path of her hand against Kit’s mouth and it almost hurt, the way she couldn’t feel it.
What she imagined hurt felt like.
“Good,” Ballantine declared simply, with a minute bob of his head. His eyes continued up, in the direction of the inky black sky and the countless twinkling stars overhead. Jade knew the moment he tuned into the swelling music of the cosmos, the limitless sounds of existence soaring with each pulse of light, as a joyful sereneness came into his normally severe features.
Jade turned her head up as well, sought the rapturous symphony to fill her mind. But there remained, in the quiet corners, the final question she had not been able to bring herself to ask.
Have you ever thought about what it feels like to touch?
She lifted one hand—the one she had pressed to the bare skin of Kit’s arm— in front of her eyes, rubbed the thumb and fingers together.
And wondered how it was possible to long for something you had never felt.