She looks up sharply at the noise, quiet as it is; she looks him in the face with eyes red as rubies as weeping. No sound escapes her in sympathetic echo though sympathy there is in her silent regard; this particular contour of grief and responsibility is one her Sleeper oft revisits to bruise himself on. Whether the wisdom he's gotten thereby can be trusted if he can't even act on it himself-- Let that abide, it is not hers to say, only hers to remember and offer what her Sleeper would if he were here.

grief. control. Shards of a remembered conversation filter through: Because it is better that somehow, I could take the blame for her death through my actions, than there was nothing whatever I could have done to save her. And: We find helplessness worse than pain. To be no more than a puff of down at the mercy of the world's raging sea was horrible, for those raised to the idea of their own autonomy and importance. She is the animal spirit, the part-soul, of one who time and again drown beneath that sea; she is the part that in the end accepted drowning and forgot autonomy to survive.

She understands, from a great distance, the appeal of choosing blame over submission. (The appeal of asking others to blame one, which at least wouldn't be so lonely.)

She also understands that Paul suffers and knowing the source of it's not a remedy itself. She stretches out her neck as far as it will go and when that proves insufficient, gets back to her feet and steps across the table to him. A little echo of the sound he made is in the back of her throat as she rears up to lift wings and arms in a universal gesture of embrace. come. grieve. Again, if he needed; as many times as needed, for an Omen (like the dead) is tireless.

She is small, and the comfort she has is small, but it is his.