"The Unending," Jin said again, slowly. "That's what she called herself."
Mirim didn't move.
For a long moment, she just stood there in the middle of the path with the whole forest holding its breath around her. Then, very carefully, like her legs might not hold her, she stepped to the side and sat down on a thick root that curled up out of the ground beside the path. She put both hands flat on the wood. Jin saw that they were shaking.
He went and sat down next to her. He didn't say anything. He waited.
"Tell me again," Mirim said quietly. "What she looked like. All of it. Please."
So he told her again. The soft green light that made up her body. The flowers in her hair that opened and closed with her breathing. The deep old eyes. The way she had leaned across the table toward him like mist moving across a field. How she had asked if he was human, and said there was something faint inside him that she knew.
Mirim listened to every word with her eyes closed.
