It was a cloudy evening.

The grey skies afforded sight of neither the stars nor moon as the encroaching night wrapped the bright lights of the Crozier in its gentle embrace, causing them to shine ever brighter. I sat on an abandoned bench, waiting. The chatter of the market seemed malms away as the snow drifted lazily down, muffling everything in a cold silence, and I could hear naught but my own thoughts, unwelcome as they were. But they would not be deterred.

The setting sun, washing the immaculate floors in a burning red, had started ebbing away. Gloaming casting darkening shadows that crept toward us, just as the dread beneath the surface of my courage roiled in my gut. I paid it no mind. The Archbishop had to be stopped.

I would have died, were it not for you.

It was a moment that stretched forever, between the hope that you would hold and the dread if you could not, and the relentless regret that I hadn’t the foresight to prevent this from happening.

A sharp ringing filled my ears, the keening growing louder and louder--

And then, silence.

Smile. A simple request, privilege of those who wouldn’t bear the consequences. But a request I had no right to deny, tumultuous emotions burning in my breast.

And then you were gone.

I glanced at my companion, having arrived as I was adrift in my thoughts, and I curled my fingers into a hard grip, seeing the resolve in her eyes that I sought to grasp in my heart. Near imperceptibly, she nodded.

There were things yet to do, that we must do. This was the privilege of those who lived, who had no choice but to accept the consequences. I couldn’t squander the gift you left me, a hope that could not have been known without first having borne despair, and I prayed that I could do for others what you had done for me.

That night, we left the city. City of ash and smoke and bitter solitude, its fleeting lights swallowed by the darkness and ice. And beneath all the fear and pain, a city of hope.

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(prize: Gaelicap)