Stephen had rather wanted to talk with Henry Winter at length, if for no other reason than to cement his hopeful deduction that Henry's recent wedding had well and truly laid to rest the remnants of old animosity concerning the woman who was now Mrs. Winter. Unfortunately, there had simply been no time for conversation. Stephen had brought little
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"Lead on, Macduff," he quoted, prompted to randomness by giddy distraction. He allowed himself to be guided out of the castle with only minor stops to stare at the weave of a wall hanging, the cracks between the stones of the corridor floors, etc.
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He sat down, heavily, on the steps, and just stared; eyes dilated, face blank.
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She shut the book, watching him watch the sunset, and eventually sat beside him on the step in companionable silence. In a way, she thought, he was appreciating all of this even more than she was, because for him it was completely new.
Not until the sun had all but sank below the horizon did she speak. "Pretty, isn't it?" she asked, knowing full well what an understatement that must be.
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(Now if only someone irreverent and blessed with magic-converted technology would come by with a boombox playing Dark Side of the Moon ...)
Dazzled, he recalled himself only when Susan's voice jarred him into self-awareness. Pulling his own notebook from his knapsack, he wrote very quickly and messily, his eyes on the sky rather than the page before him.
"Lovely," he said absently.
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She let him sit and write and stare, wrapping her cloak tighter about herself as it began to snow. Even yet, she herself had to marvel at the quieting power of snow--how it could muffle the world in soft white. The flakes drifted in silence, a few at first and then a torrent, swirling and dancing on the faint breeze. A small smile crossed her face as she stretched out a hand, watching the snow settle on her sleeve--this was something she knew he would never, ever have seen before ( ... )
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At the moment he was incapable of such concern. He was eminently distractible, and Susan's hand on his wrist made him blink and start. "What? Oh.She wore gloves, and the fabric of his coat and his sweater added to the protective barrier between his skin and hers, so that there was none of the electric surge he'd felt on Halloween, that pulse of blood palpable beneath the skin. This he did note, and thought maybe he should tell her it might help her to wear gloves all the time, to shield herself from the ( ... )
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"They are like fireflies," he said, "only blue, and frozen ..."
He found he disliked the idea of breaking the snowflakes himself. It seemed somehow careless, wrong in its carelessness; these things were so beautiful, and to destroy them would surely be a waste. For Susan it was different. She was Death; it was her job.
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She made her slow way back to him, still poking snowflakes at random. "I don't wonder why he wanted to share it, either," she said. "Oh, look there--I think it's an owl."
She pointed to a shape that had started to swoop down from a distant tree--a blob, nailed in place, that upon closer inspection did indeed prove to be an owl.
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Stephen sprang up and ran through the snow to where he thought he saw the owl.
Cue his standing beneath that spot, peering upward, soundless, for a very long time.
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"Let me know if you need me to move the light," she said, adjusting her cloak and sitting cross-legged on the snow, the Thermos next to her feet. "What is it, exactly? Aside from an owl, I mean." She was still laughing--a laugh more delighted than anything else, without a trace of anything like mockery.
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"No, I can't say that I am," she said, sipping more tea. "Though I'm starting to think it's a good thing you haven't got this particular power, or you might spend so much time watching birds and bugs and beasts that you'd forget to eat or sleep."
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If he had such powers, he would be entirely too wrapped up in observation of flora and fauna to register such a thing as loneliness.
"Imagine, too, the potential for surgery," his thoughts raced on aloud. "Would the blood stop entirely, circulation cease, with all of time frozen, so that the surgeon might work with view unoccluded by the usual welling of blood in wounds or in the surgical incision itself? Does it cause harm to the fabric of the universe that you exercise this stopping of time, so that you would not wish to make use of it routinely? Were I to dissect this owl, and then stitch it up again, would it be whole at the end? No, the damage would still be done, as with those snowflakes ... Hm."
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