Eris kept her fingers flat on the thick paper of her notebook, her quill resting idle in her hand.
She stared past the stone balustrade toward those distant, glittering ridges, but her mind was turning inward, trying to slide beneath the surface of her thoughts the way she had done so many times before.
It was an old habit, a quiet, almost effortless reaching out, like calling a familiar name in a small house and waiting for the floorboards to creak in response.
She found nothing but a vast, cold silence.
It was not the flat emptiness of absence; she could still feel the heat of him, deep down in the dark, like standing outside a heavy wooden door with a fierce hearth burning on the other side.
But the door was there now, thick and locked.
