She stepped close and drew back her hood to reveal the face that few ever saw.

Within her concealing garments, she was nothing of what she seemed. She was very young, barely a grown woman, her hair long and dark, her eyes a startling blue, and her features smooth and lovely.

As a child, when she had the name she no longer spoke, she would look at herself in the mirror of the waters of a little cove that pooled off the stream that ran not far from her home and try to imagine how she would look when grown. She had not thought herself pretty then, when it mattered to her. She did not think herself pretty now, when it did not.



There was warmth and tenderness in her face and eyes as she bent to kiss the ruined man on his lips. She held the kiss long enough to draw the breath from his lungs, and then he died.


"Be at peace," she whispered in his ear.