Afterwards, neither of us said anything for a long time.
It wasn't the awkward kind. I have had the awkward kind, in better rooms than this, with better lighting and considerably fewer rocks, and this was not that. It was just quiet. Her head was on my arm and my arm had gone numb about twenty minutes earlier and I had made the executive decision not to bring it up.
Nothing was healed. I want that on the record, because the greedy part of me had been hoping, the part that runs the arithmetic even when I have told it not to. My well sat exactly where it had sat, low and flat behind my ribs. The cuts stayed cuts. Whatever it is that runs between a summoner and a spirit had not run between us, because she had said as much beforehand, and she is a summoner herself, and she knew the answer before I did.
So it hadn't been for anything.
'…Huh.'
