She was his talisman. She warded off the ebbing darkness which blurred the peripheries of his life. She kept the rising tide at bay, lapping against the edges of his mind. Her presence warmed the most desolate pools of his heart which otherwise made homes for darker thoughts and creatures of his imagination. Without her he knew his fingers would slip and he would fall, cascading into the depths of his own inevitability. For it was inevitable; she was not his.