With all of its contents packed into boxes, his mentor’s workspace seemed larger. The blank walls and empty floor suggested untapped potential. Years of experimentation, practice, and study had been erased. Lomard chuckled roughly, voice still strained from his latest crying jag.
“I’ve cleaned up after her, but it hurts more, if anything. You said it would help. Some antidote to grief you have there.”
Cleo indulged his minor outburst. She had put up with too many snide remarks and teary confessions in the past several days to be bothered by a snippy comment: a woman of infinite patience. She approached the lab table. He had cleared the beakers and vials first, but heavier equipment would require four hands to remove. She wanted him to keep moving, but she wouldn’t say as much. She ushered him on gently. Whatever suggestion she had intended to make, though, was swallowed up by the chiming of the fifth bell.
Both of them looked to the grimy window. Wizards’ windows accumulated grime from puffs of smoke, potion fumes, ooze manifestations, and the like. He reflexively breathed in, treasuring the smell of a laboratory that had not been aired out recently enough. The uninitiated turned up their noses at the smell of magic, but Lomard wanted to sing its praises until it wore down his voice completely, irretrievably- Shada would never speak again, and he wanted to join her. Cleo placed a hand on his shoulder. He sighed, smiling tightly. No time to wish for death: Cleo was her to make sure this town had a wizard by the end of the day.
“A smile is the shortest distance-” he started, but couldn’t finish. Words fail. The lump in his throat rose, drowning out everything else he might have done- cast a spell, sung a hymnal, cursed the heavens- and demanded that he feel only his grief and his guilt. If he had been there- if only he could have- he wondered if Shada had felt the same lump in her throat as she drowned on the stairs of her tower. The signs of water damage had faded, now. It had taken three castings to do that much, and he had no interest in hiding it any further. The thing deserved to bear scars.
“A smile is the shortest distance between two people,” Cleo whispered, taking him by the hand and leading him down the tower stairs.