[Ortus emerges from the back of the dojo with a basket of freshly laundered clothes in his arms, and he halts on the threshold of the room, the door close to where Gideon's sword has been mounted with the greatest respect upon the wall. It bears a woven wreath of dark clustered flowers, petals nearly a perfect black, and there is something of a makeshift shrine on the table beneath its scabbard's point: white candles, bone trinkets, a pair of silver winged pins, and folded sunglasses.
He does not drop the basket. He sets it aside on the floor with exaggerated care and crosses the space between them the same way, trepidation draped heavy across his shoulders and eyes full of anxious awe.
They had explained to him what the dissolution of her form might mean. It had not soothed him. Nothing had, these past shadowed days, but he had borne it in silence that resembled, though was not, stoicism. There is no trace of it in the great open relief that transforms his features, a sheen of tears already in his vision as he beholds a resurrection.]
You are returned to us.
[Not entirely whole, but so much more so than she had been, that hollow, incorruptible shell. He takes in the wonder of her eyes alight, and in an outburst of most unseemly exuberance he reaches out to lay his hand upon her warm shoulder.]
open
He does not drop the basket. He sets it aside on the floor with exaggerated care and crosses the space between them the same way, trepidation draped heavy across his shoulders and eyes full of anxious awe.
They had explained to him what the dissolution of her form might mean. It had not soothed him. Nothing had, these past shadowed days, but he had borne it in silence that resembled, though was not, stoicism. There is no trace of it in the great open relief that transforms his features, a sheen of tears already in his vision as he beholds a resurrection.]
You are returned to us.
[Not entirely whole, but so much more so than she had been, that hollow, incorruptible shell. He takes in the wonder of her eyes alight, and in an outburst of most unseemly exuberance he reaches out to lay his hand upon her warm shoulder.]