The air stirred, and Lee felt himself drifting away from the body he had inhabited for more than three decades. He could actually gaze down at it, at the limp figure still behind the big boulder, with the little red flower on his lifeless hand. His shoulder didn't hurt anymore. The fight felt like a thousand years ago. But that was not what was worrying him. He couldn't see his Hester anymore.
He was used to her being at his side, a keen-eyed rabbit who loped beside him. But where was she? He could feel her, and yet she seemed just beyond his grasp.
Suddenly, he felt himself being sucked downward. Down, down, down. And all of a sudden, he was at a riverbank, and an old, weather-beaten man was sitting calmly in a boat, just at the edge of the water. Then his heart skipped a beat.
There, next to him, was Hester. Her beautiful eyes were gleaming. "Lee," she whispered.
Without hesitation, Lee bent down and scooped up Hester, hugging her to his breast. Then, he turned to the old man. "I'm ready." he said.
The old man pointed one long, crooked finger at Hester. "I go only with the human, not the daemon."
Lee's heart took another shaking. Deep inside of him, he had always known that this would sometime happen, but he had never acknowledged it directly. His stomach turned cold and he involuntarily began to shiver. Hester, eyes still gleaming, said in a broken voice, "We knew this time would come, Lee, we knew it."
No, Lee wanted to shout, no! And now the tears were beginning to come. They burned two rivers down his thin cheeks, and fell onto Hester's fur. And at each tear, Hester seemed to quiver.
"Please," Lee pleaded with the boatman, his eyes too blurry to see clearly. But he didn't need to see the old man to know what his answer would be. So instead, he turned to Hester. He buried his face in her fur and held it there for a long time. Finally, he whispered, "Hester, I'll think of you every minute, every minute when I'm" he stopped and choked back a sob, "gone. And one day, I'm going to come back and get you, and we'll be together again." Hester didn't say anything, she just looked straight into Lee's eyes, and right then and there, Lee knew his heart would be crying until he was back with his daemon again. After one last parting kiss, Lee stepped slowly into the boat. Hester stood solidly on the shore, but inside she was sobbing with grief. And as the boat slowly left shore, two pairs of eyes were fixed upon each other in agony, and two hearts were being torn apart.
