We will be able to move about more freely.'
'But how will we eat?' She didn't want him to stop talking.
'We will eat.' Silence. 'I feel more at peace in the Cold
World. For there, if a man is strong, he can breathe the free wind
unafraid. Only the hardiest predators remain, and among them is
respect.'
'What about your people?'
'They will follow the herds, as they always do.'
'Then how do you know what the winter is like? Or will you go with
them?'
A hurt, disbelieving look came over him. 'NO.' He felt
frustration pushing back at his own will to live. 'These past three
Winters I have lived alone.' He looked out, and thought he might know
what she was feeling.
'I have known loneliness, too, though perhaps it is another kind.
Your sorrow is for friends and ways that have died. Mine is for
companionship that I have never known. Because to my people I am what
this world is to you: something beyond their experience. And because of
that they fear it, and mistrust..... I would be your friend, Sylviana,
but I don't always know how.' She turned, and in the shadows his
face looked worn and grim: there was no doubting his pain. She lowered
her eyes to the ground.
'I just don't understand,' she said, half in a whisper. 'I
don't understand it at all.
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