Revelation and Restoration

The only way I can think to relate everything that has happened tonight is just to tell it in order.

I was with Freya as she came home this evening for the first time—she spent Sunday night in the hospital, and last night with the Seilers.  I knew that Asa’el would want to know how she was—at least he will when he is better. 

She does not look well.  She is still pale and drawn, and there are dark shadows in her eyes.  I think, however, that those shadows are more from worry than from her own pain.  After all it was Asa’el’s pain that broke her spirit the other day, and not her own.

Exhaling as she stepped back into her house, she reached out yet again to all of the angels present—there are many of us on guard still, worried about another attack—and her shoulders slumped.  She has been listening, checking her computer, waiting desperately for any news of Asa’el.  But he is unable to speak, and none of the rest of us can give her the answers she is seeking.  We cannot even reassure her when we do not have any good news to offer.

“Good to be home?” Kara asked from right behind her.

Freya flinched, then turned with a smile.  She is a talented actress.  “Very.  I think I’m just going to run up and take a quick shower.”

“Good plan,” Kara said, setting her overnight bag down with a thump.  George closed the door behind them.  “Let’s go,” Kara added, fixing Freya with a hard glare.

In any other circumstance, Freya and I would both be glad for the care of her friends.  Neither of them have let Freya out of their sight for even an instant.  This does not, however, make it possible for her to reach out to an angel.

“Come on,” Freya scoffed, “you really going to shower with me again?  Because you know that was awkward.”

“What was awkward,” Kara retorted, “was you cutting yourself open at your birthday party.  That was awkward.”

Kara’s fear manifests as anger.  It has not made things easier for Freya, who is still feeling fragile.

“Come on, Freya,” George said gently as tears came to Freya’s eyes.  “You know the drill.  Kara will just sit by the door, okay?”

Freya shook her head, wiping away the tears.  “I just need a few minutes to myself,” she said.  “Can’t you guys trust me for a few minutes?”

“No,” they answered together.  Kara was sharp, George conciliatory, but both were firm.

Freya covered her eyes and abandoned pretense.  “Okay,” she said, her voice shaking.  “You both have told me that I just need to say what I need, and you’ll do it, right?”

“That’s why we’re here,” George said.

“Then I need you guys to give me just a couple minutes.  Even just thirty seconds.  You can check the room, you can take out anything you think I might use to hurt myself.  I swear I’ll just stand in the center of the room, I won’t even move.  But I need to be alone.  Please, I am begging you.”

Kara folded her arms, her scowl unchanged.  George only shook his head.

They both started when Freya fell to her knees.  “I am begging you,” she said, her breath coming in sobs.  She clasped her hands in front of her, tears streaming from her eyes.  “Please, please, just give me thirty seconds, please.  I won’t hurt myself, I won’t do anything, but I need to do this.”

Her desperation was painful to watch, for Kara and George too.  “I can’t,” Kara said in a choked voice to her husband, throwing up her hands.  She strode past Freya and the bathroom door slammed shut.

George put his arms around Freya’s waist and pulled her to her feet, drawing her into the living room.  “Can you tell me why you need this so badly?” he asked, settling her on the sofa and putting a blanket around her shoulders.

Freya was silent.  She knew how the truth would sound and was incapable of coming up with any lies.

“Fray, think of how it looks to us,” George murmured to her.  “We had no idea you were doing so badly—”

“I’m not, I’m okay, George, it was just a—a sudden thing.  It won’t happen again.”

“How can you be sure about that?  Do you know what caused it?”

“Yes.”

“But you won’t tell us?” he pressed.

She stared at him.  “You’ll never believe me.”

“How do you know?”

“I know, okay?”  She took his hand.  “George, I know this is all so crazy, but I’m not crazy.  I promise you I’m not.  I’m going to get better, but I just need to do something first.  One small thing, and then I’ll be okay.” 

She did not promise this, for she knew that if Asa’el was dead, she would not be okay.  Nor would I be, and at least my friends and family would understand my grief.

George looked up at the ceiling.  “Look, you wouldn’t talk to the therapist, you wouldn’t talk to your mom—is there anyone you can talk to?”

“Yes,” she said, “there is, but I need privacy.  Please, just thirty seconds, I swear.”

He frowned.  “Who is it?”

She shook her head, the tears returning.  “George, please, I wish I could explain, but all I can say is that there is someone I need to talk to, I need to, but I can’t if you’re here, and—”

“Why the fuck not?” Kara demanded from the doorway.  She came back into the room and leaned in close to Freya.  “Who is it?  You gotta tell us.”

“Give her some space, Kara,” George said quietly.

“Nope, definitely not,” Kara said, straightening up.  “No space, no privacy, no nothing, but I will take an explanation.”  She folded her arms again, waiting. 

Freya looked up at her with a spark in her eye.  “Your bedside manner sucks, you know?”

“Tough,” Kara answered.  “Now me and George are here because your mom thought you’d be more likely to talk to us than to her, so you’re going to talk.  Doesn’t have to be right now, but until you do we’re not leaving you alone at all.  I’m making your meals, I’m sleeping on your floor, you will go to the goddamn bathroom with me—you lucky I haven’t handcuffed you to my fucking wrist.  You want to get rid of me, you better convince me that I am not needed here.”

Freya stared at her friend.  She knew that her explanation would only convince Kara that she was crazy, and she would be back at the hospital, which she hated, and which would give her no chance to reach out to anyone.  “Please,” she repeated, her eyes sliding closed with defeat, “thirty seconds.”

“Not one,” Kara snapped.

“Counter offer,” George said suddenly, and both women’s eyes slid to him.  He looked at his watch.  “So it’s seven o’clock, almost on the dot.  Kara and I will give you thirty minutes of judgment-free listening.  We will completely suspend all disbelief for that time, and whatever you tell us will be taken as absolute truth.”  He stepped back to sit in the armchair across from Freya, drawing Kara with him.  “So you can tell us anything, and we won’t judge or question or say what we really think, and if by seven-thirty you’ve convinced us, you’ll get your thirty seconds.”

Freya stared at him.  Kara was also looking doubtful, but at a look from George, she sighed and settled on the arm of the chair.  Both of them looked at Freya.

“Come on, Fray,” George said, “the only way out of this is through.  You have to tell someone.  Might as well be us.  Whatever it is, we’re with you one hundred percent.”

“For the next twenty-nine minutes,” Kara clarified.

Freya hesitated, and I heard her wondering if she was brave enough to speak the truth after all this time.  So I went to stand behind her, and she took a deep breath.

“All right,” she said in a quiet voice.  She folded her legs beneath her and wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders.  She didn’t look at George or Kara as she spoke.  “Do either of you believe in angels?”

“We both do,” George said promptly.  Kara looked at him with raised eyebrows, and he smiled at her.  “Don’t we, baby?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she said, very unconvincingly.

George put his hand on her knee.  “If you can’t play by the rules, Kara, you wait outside,” he said lightly.

Kara turned back to Freya.  “I love angels,” she said.  “I got three.”

Freya laughed a little, covering her eyes.  “Well, lately, I’ve had a lot more than that.  There’s one standing right behind me at this moment.”  As George and Kara both looked over her shoulder—the wrong one—Freya turned her head to me.  “Thank you, by the way.”

I only wished I could do better for her.

“Obviously invisible,” George said.

“Yes, and inaudible,” Freya said.  “They communicate with humans through emotion and intuition, and it’s only after they’ve known one of us for a long time—and then only if we’re open to it—that they can speak more clearly.”  She took a long breath.  “There is one who’s been with me that long—years, really.  He’s done so much for me, and he’s the sweetest, kindest person I have ever known.  His name is Ace.”

George blinked.  “Funny name for an angel,” he said.  “Aren’t they all called things like Michael and Raphael and Uriel?”  Then when Freya looked at him in surprise, he grinned.  “I was raised Christian, remember?”

She managed a smile.  “Well, you’re right.  His name is Asa’el, but I always thought that was a mouthful, so I call him Ace.”

“So is Ace here?” Kara asked.

Freya’s smile dropped away.  “No,” she said.  “I don’t know if…”  She took a shaky breath.  “See, Ace is my Guardian.  He didn’t used to be—he was a Cupid at first.”

“Seriously?” Kara blurted before she could stop herself.

George squeezed her knee again.  “Strike two,” he murmured.  “Go on, Freya.  A Cupid?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Is it so surprising that heaven cares whether or not we find love?  He was a big part of getting you two together, and hasn’t that made both of you better people?”

George and Kara looked at one another in surprise.  Free of their stares for a moment, Freya sat up a little straighter.  “Ace was on another job when he first ran into me, and he was impressed by something he saw in me.  He took an interest in me, enough that eventually he took me on as a charge, trying to pair me up with someone.”  She smiled ruefully.  “I didn’t make it easy on him, but he never gave up on me.  He was so much on my side that when his superiors tried to tell him to stop wasting his time on me, he changed his specialty so he could stay with me.  Apparently angels just don’t do that, but Ace did.  For me.”

“Specialty,” Kara repeated.  “So every angel has its own job?”

“Yeah,” Freya said, encouraged by the question.  “There are the ones you’d think about—Healers, and Muses, and Cupids, but there are also angels who take care of animals and angels who look into the future and angels who manage luck.  There’s dozens of different jobs.  But they’re all working for us.”  She leaned forward.  “See, we were all angels once.  Angels are new, young souls, and eventually every angel will be born into a human body.  And when we incarnate, we lose the knowledge we had of the universe, and we go out into the world to live our lives and see what we can learn.”

“Well, that sounds like a shitty system,” Kara snorted.  “They take all the answers away so we have to figure it out all over again?  What a setup.”

“But it’s really genius,” Freya insisted, “because if we don’t know for sure how the world works, we can’t lean on anyone else.  We each of us have to figure out what good is, and follow that.  And because we aren’t sure, because we’re doing it on our own, it makes our choices and our actions so much more meaningful than if we were doing it just to please the Boss.”

Kara was looking at Freya with a narrow-eyed look that poorly hid her concern.  George, however, was fascinated.  He leaned forward.  “So what happens when we die?” he asked.  “Do we turn back into angels?”

“No,” Freya said, tensing again.  “If we get it right in life, if we do more good than bad, we become saints, and we go up to VIP heaven.  And if we don’t…”  She shivered, and her hand went to cover the bandage on her arm.  “Well, if you believe in angels, then you have to believe in their opposite.”

Now she had their absolute attention.  It took her a moment, though, before she could go on.

“Ace is a Cherub,” she said slowly, “which means he’s a special kind of Guardian.  He hunts the Fallen—those souls who were too selfish or too unkind or too…something to make it back to heaven.  Who lived their lives wrong.  The Fallen, well, fall, and they’re banished from the afterlife, and most of them just wander alone for the rest of forever, but some are bitter, or angry.  Some come back.  And there are as many different kinds of the Fallen as there are angels, and some are petty tricksters and cowards, but some are horrifying.”

I wrapped my wings around her.  This was much harder to tell, I knew.

“You remember when I showed up on your doorstep a couple weeks back?” she asked.

Both George and Kara nodded.

“I said I just had a bad feeling, and at first that was true.  Ace wouldn’t tell me what had happened until later that night.  One of the Fallen had caught and killed an angel, and used her—spirit, I guess?  She didn’t have blood, but that was the sense of it—to leave a message for Ace on my kitchen wall.  A threat.”

Kara looked at the kitchen door, and she too shivered.  George put his arm around her waist.

“Her name is Asoharith,” Freya said, the words leaving a chill in her as she spoke them.  “She was just a Violence, but she’s been gaining power and influence these past months, and just recently she became an Apostate—a hunter of angels.  And Ace, and through him me, too, have been her targets.”  She looked at Kara.  “Remember that time I almost fell down the stairs at the office?  Or the bar fight?  Or when I got so sick?  All of those were caused by Asoharith.”

Neither Kara nor George were scoffing now.  They are not insensitive themselves, and they remembered something strange about all of those instances.  Suddenly everything Freya was saying seemed more real than ever.

“There were other attacks,” Freya went on.  “She’s been coming after me, because she wasn’t strong enough to hit Ace directly, and she knew that she could hurt him by hurting me.  But now…”

Suddenly overwhelmed, Freya hunched her shoulders and pressed her hands to her temples.  “Oh, God, oh, God.”

George jumped up and came to put his arm around her shoulders.  “Take your time,” he said.

She laughed wildly.  “But I’m running out of time, aren’t I?”  She looked at George’s watch—it told her that a third of her time was gone. 

George didn’t answer.  He only waited, and Kara settled down into the chair in his place and watched Freya closely.  In a moment she had her breath back, if not her composure, for the terrible story.

“I thought it was Ace calling me,” Freya whispered.  “That’s why I left the party.  He’s been gone, following Asoharith’s trail, trying to find her.  But she found me first, and she lured me out, and she tried to get me to call him.”  She was shaking.  “When one of them touches you…it’s the most horrible feeling.  I could feel how much she hated me, how jealous she was, how she wanted to just take me apart.  But she wasn’t strong enough in that way—she could only touch my spirit.  And she did.  She made me relive all the most selfish and awful things I’ve ever thought, and she made me remember all of the people I’ve ever hurt, whether they deserved it or not.  And through it all I knew that she didn’t really care about me, that I was nothing more than a means to an end.

“I didn’t call him,” she went on, and repeated it as if trying to convince herself.  “I didn’t call him.  But the knife was in my hand, and…”  She laughed, her voice breaking.  “So stupid, it was so stupid, I knew it wouldn’t do any good.  Angels and Fallen can’t do much with the physical world.  But they can do a little—enough to move the knife.”

She fell quiet for a moment, while both George and Kara stared at the white bandage on Freya’s arm.

“Of course Ace came when I screamed,” she said.  “I knew he would.  We’re so close now it would take much less than that to bring him to me.  So he came, and for a second—for a second I saw him.  I never did before, not clearly.  But there he was, this great towering figure with two pairs of wings and a burning bow and arrow in his hands.  And I thought for a second I was saved.

“But then Asoharith turned to him, and he recognized her, and he just dropped his weapon.  I could feel his shock and horror.  Because she—she was someone that he’d taken care of when she was alive, someone he fought to save and protect, and now there she was and she’d turned into this horrible monster.  But he still loved her, and so he didn’t move when she—”

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.  George embraced her again, looking at Kara with wide-eyed worry.  Kara was sitting very still.

By the time Freya had recovered herself, over half her time was gone.  She wiped her eyes and looked at her friends with weary desolation.  “I wasn’t the one who was hurt worst in that alley,” she told them.  “Because if Ace could have at all, he would have been with me when I woke up in the hospital.  He would never let me face all this alone.  But he wasn’t there, and I haven’t heard anything from him, and I am so scared—”  She cut off that line of thought by covering her mouth.  I leaned in closer, and she swallowed and lowered her hand.  “I have to know,” she said in a low voice.  “Even if it’s the worst possible news—I have to know what’s going on.”

There was a heavy silence after that, broken, to everyone’s surprise, by Kara.  “So you just want to call Ace and see if he answers you?” she asked.  To her credit, she was trying hard to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

Freya nodded.

“Go ahead, then,” George said, sitting back from her. 

She was still uncomfortable with the two of them watching, but she wasn’t about to lose this opportunity.  Getting to her feet, she took a few steps away from them and closed her eyes.  “Ace,” she called.  “Asa’el, please, if you can hear me, just give me some kind of sign.  I’m okay now, but I need to know if you’re all right.  Please.”

More than willing to be her messenger, I left them for a moment to return to heaven and check on Asa’el.  In the Asylum, Asa’el was curled in the darkest, quietest corner, surrounded by no fewer than three Healers.  Brid was close by, but the exhaustion that hung her wings heavy explained why she wasn’t herself at work over our friend.  Her seniors have been obliged to drag her away from him in order to rest, or else she, too, may need healing.

Even from here we could both hear Freya’s voice, growing desperate again, but Asa’el did not stir.  His wings were tightly closed around himself, and not even a feather flickered.  His aura trembled with self-loathing and agony, its light weaker than it was even a few hours before.

“Jaathiya is coming,” Brid told me, but without much hope in her voice. 

I shook my head.

“I know,” she agreed with my unspoken sentiment.  “He needs not greater power but greater motivation.”

“If only we could bring him to Freya,” I said in frustration.  “She would break through to him as even Jaathiya could not.”

Suddenly Brid straightened, and I could see the hope in her aura.  “Maybe there is a way that we can.”

“Brid, he’s far too weak to bear even a moment on Earth!”

“No, I know, but maybe—oh, Inca, just go back to Freya, please, and help her.”  She dashed away, and I obeyed her request, praying and praying that her idea would work.

Freya broke off when I returned, her heart picking up speed for a moment, until she realized that I was not the one she’d hoped for.  She buried her face in her hands, deeply aware of her friends waiting behind her.  There were only a few minutes left.

George glanced at his watch.  “Freya, let me clarify something,” he said, sounding quite calm.  “You can tell that other angels are around, but you can’t talk to them the same way you can talk to Ace?”

“I can talk to them all I want,” Freya said with a bitter laugh, “but they can’t talk to me, at least not in words.  It took Ace weeks to figure that out.”  She wiped her eyes.  “Apparently there’s a way they can cheat the system and kind of force us to see and hear them, but they aren’t allowed to do that.”

“No way to appeal that, I guess?” George said with half a smile.

“No, I’ve never had any contact with any of the more powerful angels,” she answered.  “Ace says that most of them save their strength for real emergencies and stay up in heaven.”

“Don’t they listen to prayers?” Kara asked, and this time she was unable to keep the edge from her voice.  She thought that George had indulged Freya’s fantasies for too long.

In a strange way, the challenge did Freya some good, and she turned to face Kara.  “How effective would you be at your job if you had millions of people shouting at you every day?” she asked.  “Ace told me there are special angels who carry prayers to the proper sources.”

“Heavenly switchboard,” Kara muttered.

George held up a hand to her.  “But Ace can hear when you call him?” he asked.

“Usually,” Freya said, wilting back against the wall.

“So if you had someone specific to call, they might hear and answer?”

Freya looked up at him with a frown.

He spread his hands.  “It seems like what you need is someone you know by name, who you can call, and who might be able to talk back to you.  Is there anyone up there like that?  Any other angel you’ve been close to?”

Freya jumped to her feet as if struck by lightning.  “Brid,” she gasped.  “She was with me when I was sick, taking care of me, and she’s Ace’s best friend up there.  Oh, how did I not think of her before?  Brid!” she cried, startling both of her friends.  “Brid, can you hear me?”

She had her eyes squeezed shut, and George and Kara were both focused on her, so I was the only one who saw Brid appear in the room, her aura brilliant with hope and worry.  I stared at her, unable to discern why she looked so very different to me in that moment.

Freya inhaled, sensing Brid’s presence.  “Brid, please,” she said.  “I know how much you love him.  I just need to know if he’s okay.”

“He is not,” Brid answered.

To my astonishment, all three of the humans jumped.  Indeed, George and Kara sprang to their feet, George with a wordless cry of shock, Kara with a cringeworthy shout of “holy fuck.”

Brid flinched, too, and looked at Kara with disapproval.  “That phrase is deeply offensive to us.  I would thank you if you would not use it again.”

“Sure, of course,” Kara said faintly.  “Sorry.”

George’s jaw was slack.  Freya was frozen in place.

“You received permission to reveal yourself to them?” I asked, stunned myself.  A revelation to Freya would not be inconceivable, given her previous knowledge, but to George and Kara as well?

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Brid answered, these words unheard by the humans.  “And you know well that they would not leave Freya alone.  In the absence of Asa’el she needs all the support she can get.”  She turned back to Freya.  “Freya, I’ve come for your help.”

This woke Freya from her astonishment, and she stumbled forward.  “Ace,” she said.  “He’s still alive?”

“As of now, but he is fading away.  Nothing we do can get through to him.”

“He was hurt that badly?” Freya asked.

“It is not the wound that worries us,” Brid answered, “although any wound dealt with the blood of his own charge would be severe enough.  But Asa’el is undermining his own healing.  He won’t let us examine him, he won’t listen to anything—he is lost in his own pain.”

Freya’s expression tightened.  “Because Asoharith is Shannon?”

Brid nodded.  “He always was too prone to blaming himself.  Now the guilt and recrimination he feels are weakening him just when he most needs strength.  We cannot persuade him that he does not deserve his suffering.”

Freya clenched her fists.  “What can I do?” she asked.  “Is there some way that I can talk to him?  Some way to make him hear me?”

The hopeful lights in Brid’s aura brightened.  “That is precisely why I am here.  It is my hope, and my seniors agree that it may be so, that by carrying a message directly from you to him, I may also be empowered by your strength.  A human’s strength is greater than any angel’s, and if anyone can break through to him, you can.  Since we cannot bring Asa’el to you, and we cannot bring you to him, this is the next best solution.”

Freya was ablaze with determination already.  “Tell me what to do,” she said.

“Hold on a minute,” George said.

Both Freya and Brid turned to him.  He took a deep breath and said, “Okay, just to be very clear—Kara, you’re seeing what I’m seeing, right?”

“Little hunchback lady with no eyes and three wings?” Kara asked.  “Glowing like a lava lamp?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kara said.  “Heard her, too.  Ace is real.”

“Which means we owe Freya an apology—”

“We can do that later,” Freya said impatiently.  “Ace needs my help, George—”

“Well, that’s what I’m getting at,” George said.  He turned back to Brid and, almost as if he could not help it, his shoulders bowed toward her.  “If a human is more powerful than an angel—?”  He paused for confirmation.

“True,” Brid said, with hardly less impatience than Freya.

George exhaled.  “Well, then, what about two humans?”

And as Brid, Freya, and I all stared at him, Kara said indignantly, “Excuse me, but I believe there’s three of us.”

Freya blinked at both of her friends.  “You—you both want to help?”

“Of course,” George said, taking her hand.  “I mean, this is all insane, but we can’t exactly deny it now.”  He made a helpless gesture at Brid with his free hand, which he then snatched back, fearing to be offensive.  “And if Ace is real, and he means that much to you—of course we’ll help.  As long as we won’t be in the way,” he added hastily, looking at Brid.

Kara took Freya’s other hand.  “Ace is the reason I have George?” she asked.

Freya nodded.

“Then he ain’t dying,” Kara said and looked at Brid.  “So what do we do?”

Brid’s eyes—which apparently the humans could not see—were brilliant with tears.  “Thank you all.  Simply focus on Freya’s words and your good wishes for Asa’el.  We will do the rest.”  She spread her wings around them and nodded to Freya.  “Speak now, Freya, as if Asa’el were listening.”

Freya took a deep breath and closed her eyes.  “Ace,” she murmured, “Ace, I’m so sorry that she hurt you.  She must have fallen a long, long way if she was once so loved by someone like you.  But she did fall, and it wasn’t because of you.  You didn’t drive her to this—she made her choices.  You did your best for her.  And even if you hadn’t, even if you did have even the smallest piece of blame for all this, I would still love you.  I would forgive you, Ace, because I know you.”  Her voice was breaking, but the tight grip of George and Kara’s hands kept her steady.  “I know you because you’ve opened your heart to me from the very beginning.  You loved me when I wasn’t yours to care for, and you loved me when you weren’t supposed to, and you loved me when it put us both in danger.  You’ve always loved me so much, but I’m not going to say more than I deserve, because love isn’t something you earn.  It doesn’t work that way.  Love is a gift, and I give it to you, Ace, the same way you’ve given it to me: over and over again.”

I wish she could have seen the power that was building in that room.  Maybe she could have, if she had opened her eyes.  Her aura was rising higher and stronger than I have ever seen it, throwing heat and light all around her, filling the room.  It was bolstered by the rushing tide of Kara’s determination, the cool and steady blaze of light in George’s faith and wonder.  Together they were building a swirling force that nearly became its own winged protector, ready to fly into battle for all of us.  It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

“I know it’s hard to come back from something like this,” Freya said.  “But I’m not letting you go, Ace.  I won’t let this be the end of us.  You and I have more work to do in the world, and I won’t do it alone.  So take what we can give you, and wake up.”

And the manifestation of their will and their wishes seized hold of both me and Brid, and we were carried away with it.  It flew up into the sky, faster than either of us have ever flown, and through the boundaries of heaven.  Other angels stopped short in wonder as it raced by, and large portions of heaven fell into awestruck silence.

When we burst into the Asylum, Brid and I were dropped unceremoniously away, and the three Healers clustered around Asa’el were thrown aside.  The flowing, glimmering inferno surrounded him, sinking through the shield he had built around himself, relentlessly chasing the shadows.  All that light and flame faded deep into his soul, leaving him hanging in the air, wings unfurled.

It was some time before the light faded and we could see clearly.  There were still the marks of the wound on his chest, but they were sealed now, the grim darkness of them lightened.  No longer did he seem so hollow and empty.

And as we all watched, he opened his heavy eyes.  “Freya?” he whispered.