Receiving no response, the man lowered his head to look directly into her eyes.
His ash-gray hair, which had grown noticeably longer over the past several months, brushed lightly against the corner of her eye.
Talia blankly gazed at his sharp face, shadowed with exhaustion.
Then she slowly lowered her eyelids again.
"I'm cold..."
Not missing the whisper that escaped her lips like air leaking from a punctured vessel, he immediately wrapped her body tightly in the thick blanket.
But she could not feel even the slightest warmth.
It felt as though she had been buried beneath cold earth.
She wondered why she knew what that felt like.
Then, suddenly, she remembered.
She had once been buried beneath rocks and soil.
Perhaps...
Perhaps she had never truly left that place.
Perhaps she had remained buried there all this time.
Wasn't that the only explanation?
There was no way she could truly have married Varkas, become his wife, carried his child...
...only to lose that child so meaninglessly.
She had simply been trapped beneath the earth, slowly decaying while dreaming an impossible dream.
Talia felt a single tear roll down her cheek.
Yet her heart remained unnaturally calm.
It felt as though her body and her mind had completely separated.
Reality and dreams.
Past and present.
Everything had become hopelessly tangled together until she could no longer think clearly about anything.
As dizziness slowly overtook her, she gently closed her eyes.
If she fell asleep now...
Perhaps the next time she opened them, it would be beneath that cold earth once again.
Perhaps...
That would be better.