Malina couldn’t answer at first. Theuli had touched too deeply the grief, loneliness and fear she had lived with for far too long. She found herself wishing that she was able to distance herself from such feelings, to push them aside. For a brief moment, she considered getting out of the wagon altogether . . .
‘I will be honest with you,’ she said slowly, doing her best to force down rising emotion. ‘It is hard, sometimes, not to become bitter. For understand, I have lost everything, including all that I was. I am not that same child of innocence whom you remember in the woods. I no longer need others to . . . to-’
Putting a trembling hand to her face, she began weeping, dryly. Guided by a mother’s instinct, Theuli ignored her words, and when she offered her embrace, something within Malina that had lain dormant for many years was swept aside; she pressed her face to the Elf-woman’s breast, remembering at once what it felt like to be held so by her own long-dead mother.
‘Be not so quick to abandon that child of innocence,’ Theuli told her softly, caressing the young woman who began sobbing, brokenly. ‘I see her yet. Despite all that has happened, she endures.’