The air was perfectly still and silent. Ordinary little sounds seemed to rattle in her ears. The slow, careful closing of the door, the way the latch turned with a tiny, familiar creaking. A small lantern was in her left hand, held aloft to allow its thin, yellow light to bathe the lock and the old key that approached. There was a singular finality in the way it fit into the keyhole, the way the springs scraped and whined as she turned it.
Stepping back, she regarded the cottage for a time. Bathed in moonlight, its windows darkened. Countless memories nudged and whispered at the edges of her mind. A wistful melange of sorrow, loneliness, pain, lust, relief, comfort, and now...death.
Her empty hand passed over her body, beginning with the hood of her cloak, adjusting it ever so slightly over her mahogany tresses. The thick, woolen scarf around her throat was loosened a bit. Her coin purse jangled softly, hidden within a larger pouch on her belt. She felt a twinge of anxiety at its lightness, but could not find the will to regret her decision. Perhaps she deserved to be rotting in a prison cell this night. Perhaps she would find no lodging, no respite, no sanctuary. Perhaps her coin would wither away and she would find her end in some frozen hovel, alone and forgotten. It would not seem an unfitting fate for such a woman, would it? Perhaps the man would go back on his word and loosen his tongue, and she would become forever exiled from the only home she had ever known.
"Intention must count for something," she heard herself whispering to the night, the words carried away on a silvery puff of breath that quickly vanished. The hand holding the lantern trembled, and she stood a little longer, until her fingers were calm and steady again. "It must."
Her own shadow preceded her as she stepped away and started along the path. Her shoes seemed to clack noisily over the little stone bridge, the burbling stream beneath long since frozen and silenced. She passed into the black embrace of the trees, her lantern swaying in her hand while she waited to feel regret. To feel loss.
To feel anything.
