Celeste
Blaise found me by the pond a few days later.
I'd gone down early, before the house woke, when the grass was still silver with dew and the air smelled of cold water and wet stone. A low mist lay over the pond in thin, trailing ribbons, and the birches stood pale and motionless along the bank like a ring of watchful ghosts. I'd pulled on one of Lowen's old flannel shirts, the cuffs rolled three times, because the mornings had turned sharp. I'd taken my usual place on the flat rock, my knees drawn up, a blanket across my shoulders, watching a pair of dragonflies stitch bright seams over the surface.
I heard him coming a long way off. Not footsteps, exactly. More the sense of someone moving carefully, the soft snap of a twig, the whisper of a gray coat brushing wet leaves. He didn'
