Chapter 23: Healer
A mirror-smooth obsidian ocean reflects an endless sky shot through with shimmering starlight threads. I stretch and spread my fingers, trailing them through the strands, breathing through tens of thousands of memories and imaginings, longings and fears.
This is my friend. This is the path and the form, the real and the reflection, the past and the future. This is Ange.
And she’s dying.
I can feel it: a twist to the strands, a snag of the weave here, a drifting apart of her fabric there. There’s a hole in the midst of her, growing. Tarnishing her light. Draining her energy. Her dreams are fading, gossamer-thin, her fears growing heavy and coarse, future unravelling . . .
I shouldn’t be here. I have no business seeing so much of her, so deeply. Just the memory of Sus
