Farewell

It was a feeling my body had forgotten, the sort you might experience when gathering by the hearth in the heart of winter.

That bizarre sensation, alongside the erasure of shivers throughout my bones and the soothing of goosebumps across my skin, was what followed Lucretia's overly cryptic words.

And in fact, peculiar warmth seeping into my body―was not what it was.

Rather, I could feel it clearly. As the ice-encased, or perhaps infected heart that I now bore, was not thawed.

This was not a heating of my chilled body.

But instead, an external sapping of that pervasive frigidity.

"Does this feel at all preferable?"

"...It's strange. My hand isn't numb anymore."

Feeling something comparable to warmth for the first time in months, I could only demonstrate my speechlessness.