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"Orphic!" The void pleaded again.

With a sigh Orphic crossed the square and headed in to the shadows.

"Abelia." Orphic said flatly, keeping his face neutral as best he could.

"It's good to see you boy."

Abelia wrapped her hands around Orphic burying her head into his shoulder ad neck with a deep exhalation of breath. Orphic returned the embrace feeling the bones of the woman beneath her loose dress. Times were tough all over.

"Where have you been? I have not seen you at the Sakpatian temple recently? I'm thinking of joining the order. Full time.' She sniffed rubbing her nose and idling looking away from Orphic. When Orphic said nothing she continued. "Full time get off the streets for good. Leave it all behind. You could stay with me. Maybe join. Stay in my cell just like old times. Those were good..." Abelia trailed off as she looked over her shoulder at the sunlit square. She began to walk further down the street. "Those were good days."

The walls that Orphic had built up as he crosses the stairs slowly began to crumble and fall.

"I.."

"You haven't seen Darius?" Abelia asked. The woman quicken her pace down the street causing Orphic to jump forward to keep up with her. Her ratty blue shawl fluttered in the air behind her. The site of the shawl almost broke his heart. More then anything Darius had ever done the stains and holes the shawl now wore gnawed at the root of his being. What saw stained his soul. She still wore it, after all of these years. He could still remember when she first brought it back to her tiny apartment.

Orphic had been staying there for one week recovering from an illness. He was laying on the bet watching the night settled in outside, when she spun into the room. Fifteen years his senior, Abelia the twenty-five year old beauty danced in happiness, a new blue shawl lazily floating in the air behind her.