It was a long time before Ceres could pull herself back up from the floor. When she did, Soren could see the damage that had been done to her. She was a shadow of her former self—pale, weak, and delicate.
The hallucination or whatever it had been began to fade around him, the strands of the vision disintegrating until his familiar home came back into view. As the mist cleared and he was able to finally catch his breath, his eyes locked onto Ceres. He saw her differently this time, no longer as a weak little girl who needed protecting. Now he looked at her with respect and a certain amount of sadness too. It took a fair amount of restraint to stop himself from embracing her in a deep and heartfelt hug, but he held back, simply because there was still so much he didn"t understand.
Ceres"s
