I was at rest today in the Asylum today when Brid came to join me. She had checked on me three times since I came in after the battle, but each time she was at work as a Healer, sustaining me with positive energy and kindness and checking on the progress of my wound. This time, she came without a word and sat down at my side, and I knew she was here just as my friend.
We were silent for a long moment before she spoke. “I dreaded this,” she said. “At first just because I didn’t know how I could bear seeing you this way—in pain, your spirit torn—” Her voice faltered, and she looked down at her hand. I said nothing; it wasn’t time for me to speak, yet. “And then, once you had the Lower Eye…I wasn’t certain that I could look you in the face again.”
In the silence that followed, I might have spoken, but I couldn’t. Her words brought to reality something that I myself had been dreading.
“You are changed,” she said quietly. “But when I saw you with the Lower Eye, it was the first time I realized that it has been coming for some time. I looked at you, with that darkness held close in your soul, and I realized that you have been becoming a warrior for some time, and that some part of you has always been a warrior, and I never saw it past the image of you I had in my heart.”
Still I said nothing, and Brid laughed to herself. “You know, I always have felt that I needed to look after you. You were my first memory, after all—the fear and the loneliness in your face. You may not realize, Asa’el, but you have carried some of that with you all this time. And though I soon came to love your kindness and your passion and your determination, it was that uncertainty that made me love you first.”
She squared her shoulders and looked me in the face then, her eyes flickering over the Eye in my brow.
“I should not have grieved,” she murmured, “to see that uncertainty disappear. I am sorry that I did, even in the smallest corner of my heart. You have taken the place that you were always meant to take, and you are sure and strong and more yourself than you have ever been.” Her mouth trembled as she smiled. “I just couldn’t shake the feeling that it meant that you did not need me anymore, and that you would soon leave me behind.”
I was stunned. This was not what I had expected. I took her hand. “Brid, I will always need you,” I said. “You are my oldest and dearest friend, the mainstay of my heart. No matter where I go or what I become, that will never change.”
She smiled and squeezed my hand, now having her own trouble speaking.
I lowered my head, my brow brushing hers. “Then,” I said in a quieter voice, “you are not afraid of me?”
I felt her stiffen, but she didn’t speak right away. Instead she put her hand under my chin and lifted my face so that she could look at me. This time, she met the gaze of the Eye without flinching, and she glowed in my sight.
“You carry it well,” she said. “You are still the brightest spirit that I have ever seen, Asa’el. And you are yourself. I could never, never be afraid of you.”
She tipped back her chin and kissed lightly just above the Eye.
I have written it all so that someday, when I have had a very dark day and I am doubting myself, I may come back and read it and remember. She will, I am certain, say it all to me again should I need to hear it, but the words are especially precious the first time, when I most needed to hear them.