The first time he saw her face he wondered if he was gazing into a mirror. That day in Nashkel, he saw his face carved into the rock, the chisel fell from Prism's hand and the sculptor gaped. "Ellesime!" Prism cried, before breathing his last, two emeralds in his fist.
It was a strange morning but even stranger was when he met her. At first, she raised her hand, her fingers poised as claws, but he had simply stared and asked simply, "Mam?"
Her arm fell limp, and with a hiss she snarled, "I am not her–" but her rage broke as the tears slid down his cheeks, as his legs gave way beneath him. Her face in its slender beauty slowly untwisted, and then, she, too, sank to her knees. The warmth of her long finger as it caught his jawline, tracing the path of his tears, the long, studied gaze. In a room filled with colossal jars housing floating bodies, reflections of a person, the pair shared sorrow and grief. For the woman, rage trickled into a flood; for the youth, answers dangled before him and with it, a maelstrom of loss.
In the chaos that followed, they escaped the labyrinth of passages, passed more chambers with jars and stumbled across a shaft that led to the surface. At the mouth of the pipe, he froze, but she simply shook her head once, firmly, and took the lead. From the shadows another watched, then followed, a familiar face.