Emalia sat in the same place she had when Colin left, staring to the north. She could have blamed her lack of movement on the fact that her body was so weak, it was ready to fail her - but that would not have been the full truth, nor the true reason... she was afraid.
I just won't go. Emalia stood up and started back into the gates of Westbridge, but the idea kept occurring to her, 'If I really care for him, I'll go up there and do what I said I would.' She paced round and round inside the gates which seemed to rather irritate the guards. It wasn't until she bumped square into someone that she stopped.
Today wasn't going to be her day. At all. After everyone had told her he wasn't coming back, all the voices seeming to sing in chorus from her mind that the man didn't want her obviously, and that he had gone away to be clear of her: Melchior stood before her like a phantom in the flesh.
She noted immediately his eyes - how different they were, and how much better he carried himself. He was no longer a dirty drunkard, but a man with some sort of purpose in his life. Emalia's face went even more pale than it normally was and a tremor, well hidden, ran through her.
It's never easy to tell someone, your first crush no less, that you are involved with someone else. It was the very same here as she stammered out the fact that she had moved on. Emalia assured Melchior that she had been nothing but honest with her feelings, and that she had not done anything with any other but be interested.
Everything seemed to go over well, for the most part. Emalia examined some peculiar wounds on Melchior's arm, then sought to speak to him regarding the Jenovese and the Jihad. Her words were immediately shut down, and when Melchior's questions on the earnestness in her heart began - she had no true answers.
For just a moment in time, Emalia gave up on the discussion of Faith to say goodbye to her friend. "Perhaps we shall meet again." "There is no perhaps if I've anything to do with it."
Emalia squeezed Melchior in her arms and turned to walk away, but before she could get far, Melchior made her another promise after a kiss to her forehead in a quiet voice, "We WILL see each other again. I cannot let go the person who saved me."
Emalia smiled, revolving the words in her mind, "the person who saved me." 'Yes.' she thought. 'I did help someone... and I have to help them all. I have to help them... all.' The two parted at last, Melchior off to his journey, and Emalia finally heading through the northern gates of the city as she trudged to hers.
