He had dreamt of Shearwater Bay, had seen the visages of Nanuq and Nutaaq and Koios! Kois, Bonechewer and the brother of his heart. And he had seen Clarice; he had pursed her through the slow transparent syrup that only materializes in a dreamscape, unable to catch at long last but a fleeting glimpse of her maddened eyes — she had walked with spirits, his daughter, his only child, and now he did not know if she moved at all in the world he still found himself chained in.
And yes, yes, Valkari had come to him, her gaze filled with the cold glitter of insanity, surmounted by the scar that Sos had given to mark her as His own. The pale madman had not felt himself respond to her, but his heart had broken with a metallic ache in his chest; he had not known it was broken until the vision of her pivoted on delicate paws, grinding the fragile shards of his heart into so much ash.
Lecter knew he could not bear it when the dream, lately turned nightmare, had breathed into ethereal existence the form of Starling, and he scarcely glanced into the haunting brilliance of her emerald eyes before he shook himself free of the invisible clinging tendrils and awoke, shuddering. He did not remember the journey to where he found himself now, but the cold tongue of the waters had soaked the new wound high on his shoulder, and the resulting pain sliced through his presently dim awareness of self.
A forgotten man, a forlorn man stood upon the shore of the wetlands, with only the distant yip of foxes privy to his pain — forsaken of his God, devoid of his pack, a stranger in a strange land. Lecter so hated weakness, had sought to excise every vestige of it from mind, heart, and soul, but the waters at his feet dripped red from the slow trickle of blood down his cheeks, crimson and salt mingling as the haggard madman gazed unseeing into the distance, longing for a death that did not come.