A HEART TOUCHED BY WINTER_ Chapter Ten_ THE GIRL WITH SILVER EYES

 

" Is death always a sad occasion?" 

- Amaia

Moira had gone silent. Her eyes, glazed and dull, perhaps seeing the evaporating fragments of a broken mind.

She swayed on her knees, kneading the smoldering carpet like a kitten seeking comfort from tactile sensation.

Lucas had hoped she would eventually come to herself. 

He grimaced. 

Perhaps there had been too little of a self to begin with for there to be anything to which to return.

Donovan snapped, "In God's Name, why did you bring her here in such shape?"

"At the start of the journey, she was corrupt but sentient, much like your fellow generals. I had hoped the sight of your uniform would shake the truth from her."

Lucas turned eyes of ice to Donovan. "Like you with Lt. Henderson, I underestimated her ability to endure."

"You ever going to forgive or forget?"

"I do not do forgiveness, General. As for forgetfulness, I am Basque. We forget the past ... once we get even."

Lucas' icy face was a sham done for the benefit of an observing enemy.

Moira's state he knew was his doing. He could not undo it, but he could end it.

He bent quick as the strike of a snake, twisting the woman's neck in one fluid move, 

breaking it as efficiently and calmly as a surgeon might amputate a finger ... and with as little observable emotion.

"My God!" exclaimed the general. "The doctors were right. You are a sociopath!"

Lucas shrugged. "What are names but tags we hang on people to easier deal with them without having to struggle to understand them."

Lucas' eyes flicked to the motionless body of Moira. So vibrant, even in madness. Now, nothing.

The bird had flown. In what tree did she now sing?

He turned to General Donovan. "Man is Man by  strength of mind. Man becomes Man by way of his heart."

The general spat a laugh. "Heart? What heart? Yours is a withered husk of Winter."

The voice Lucas never thought to hear again wisped from the shadows, though it was whispery as if coming from the depths of an open grave.

"Oh, General, you look but do not see. Man pays with gold for a slip of the foot, but pays with his soul for such a slip of the tongue as yours just now."

The misty form of Lt. Henderson wavered before the two men. 

Eyes even more tortured than Lucas remembered ... eyes in whose depths swam the monsters that drove him or haunted him ... or both.

Was she here to hone the edge of his razor soul ... or worse.