Wheeling Gull Isle treibloka

If he was Magdalene, that made her Christ.

And though she was no prophet, nor a god-man, nor the messiah of a downtrodden people, he wept mutely and without tears at her feet. She embraced him as the father did his prodigal son.

He breathed shakily into her collarbone, undone. What was it that had broken the dam? The prayer perhaps, or her own tears, or what she had said -

he's in your voice, daniil,

- and that he had never thought that he could be the conduit of anything greater than himself? All the years he had spent, yoked to his own wretchedness. He had hoped for a fresh start among the Soldiers -- but what a cruel joke. He thought if only he could rebuild himself from nothing he could make it right. But he had had nothing before, and only knew to squander it. All the years spent retreating inside his own head and feeling proud to be untouchable, of the distance between himself and the world he had meted out with great effort.

For some unnameable reason a memory revealed itself to him then, as vivid as the moment he had lived it: he was spitting up blood in the rarefied light of dawn, the physical stress of their constant marching having given him an ulcer.

Now he watched himself with horror and revulsion as he pressed his cheek to her neck so that he would think of and hear nothing more than her heartbeat, the connection between them almost umbilical.