Her sister said her name, and Lifthrasir's body trembled as she went down off the ridge once more!
She walked. She could have flown, and she did not call Kir One or Kir Two after her. She walked across the starlit grass on her bare feet, through the ash of the Red Hour and the scattered light of broken phantoms, past Unfathomables who drew back from her without knowing why, until she came to the long dark furrow in the snow. There she stopped, and looked down at it, and then she stepped over it.
The soil was warm. It had always been warm. It came up through the soles of her feet just as it had the first time she crossed this field, the same warmth that had reached into nothing and found her, and for one moment, she let herself feel it all the way through.
Then she closed that part of herself, very carefully, and walked on toward the man in the snow.
It was an utterly dreadful situation. She did not want to do it. But alas. Her dream. Her existence. Her...family.
