Gone.
It shouldn’t surprise her, because so much is gone – gone is a word Cordis is intimately familiar with, a ghost haunting the peripheries of her vision. The lightning is gone, her magic is gone – and worst, worst, worst, she is gone, Spyndle is gone and there is nothing left of her but a heart.
So of course this being is gone, lit off for the territories. Another wave of despair crests and threatens to descend. But she fights it, because her breakdowns are meant to be private things. She does not share her tears with their gluttonous eyes.
She may not have the lightning, she may not be a warning sign writ large, but she does her best to still portray these things.
But the girl speaks on, and claims she can do what the being had – restore, make things whole. Cordis does not dare to hope (does she?) but those words keep her here, like shackles around her ankles.
Hope is a pathetic and determined thing.
“I had magic,” she says, pauses, “before.”
Magic is a strange word on the tongue – she is a nascent magician, compared to most, and she does comparatively little – she wears lightning. She aligns herself with no kingdoms, protects no one (the one she wanted most to protect, the one she would have given everything to protect – well, she failed her, didn’t she?).
“I want dearly to have it back,” she says, “and would find myself indebted to you, if you can do what you say.”
For what does she have to lose? She has nothing left, her children are gone, her lover is gone. She is a boring, silver mare with a brand on her hip and two hearts beating in her chest, and she is desperate to feel the lightning surrounding her once more.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me