There came at last a point when Kurogane understood - truly understood - that he might never see Princess Tomoyo again.
At first he had treated the journey as a mission. She had said he needed to learn: so be it. He did not need to understand. He was a ninja and in her service. As a chosen companion he traversed the twin immensities of time and space, and carried her in his thoughts as always.
But it was not a mission like any other. Consciousness of the fact took hold gradually, like the chill from an open vein. World upon world upon world led you only back to yourself - back to the place you started, he wanted to say, but he did not begin with himself. In his heart the multiple and reverberating universes came to rest at a single point: he was in exile from his axis.
How long was it possible for a man to bleed, from a wound that did not heal?
Of all men and all questions, he ought to know the answer.
It was snowing. They were hiking through the woods; it was not yet noon. He brought up the rear of the party, and his feet sank through the lighter imprints made by the others, making the ice underneath crunch. Mokona burbled and hummed to itself, huddled under the collar of his cloak.
Ahead of him Fye turned and glanced back, one hand on the bridle of the pack mule he was leading. The hem of his long lambskin coat trailed through a windswept drift, and came away frosted with white. Kurogane closed his eyes.
She liked to walk in the garden, when the winter plum were blooming. Sometimes she would stand beneath the trees in a brown study, long enough that snow accumulated on her trailing sleeves and dampened the layers of silk. Come inside, Princess, he begged of her, and she smiled at him and said, Please don't worry, Kurogane, I'm not cold-
He should have asked a token of her, he thought: a scrap of a letter, a ribbon, a glove. But he knew he could not stand to bring such a thing to his lips, and note each time that her scent had faded again.