Too Late
Too late.
She was always late. Even Rorek had noticed it, and he could be amazingly dense when it came to finding flaws in his lady. She was never late by a great margin—only a few minutes or so. Ten, at most. It was much remarked upon in the village, and no less than twelve individuals had threatened to take her place should she be late for her wedding to Rorek. (Her fiancé had been less amused by this than she was. "You'd better be on time," he had said darkly, "because I will kill myself before I pledge to spend the rest of my life with anyone but you." She really hadn't improved matters by telling him that three of the potential replacements were male, either.)
Now, she stares at the white book cradled in her lap and laughs bitterly. Her one flaw that she had never tried to correct, because it had never mattered, really. Ten minutes? Why, what harm could ten minutes do?
She knows now. Oh, she knows the value of ten minutes now.
Ten minutes can be your only love and your almost-friend sealing each other away for centuries.
Ten minutes can be arriving just in time to hear that gods-damned spell, running faster than you knew you could and screaming your lungs out that it was just a mistake, dammit, he's overreacting to nothing, Malchior didn't touch you, you're still here and dear gods he'd better not do anything stupid—but he can't hear you, and he goes and does that stupid thing that you were dreading and when you get there all you can find is the book lying there on the ground and looking so cursed normal, Rorek's journal, just sitting there as though he were going to come walking up at any moment and ask you why you're staring at his journal before giving you that wonderful smile and saying he's sorry for teasing you when you both know he is anything but.
Ten minutes can be knowing you'll never see that smile again, the one he seems to reserve just for you that says "You're crazy, but I love you anyways" and makes you bite your tongue to keep from declaring out loud how utterly gorgeous he is and then proceeding to kiss him senseless—though you know he wouldn't mind.
Ten minutes can be both the wizard you loved with every fiber of your being and the dragon you had developed a tenuous friendship with believing that the other was responsible for your death when you were still alive, blast it all, and there was no need for them to go all stupid and manly and fight each other to the death over your memory when you weren't even dead.
Ten minutes can lead to twenty, thirty, forty minutes of doing nothing but looking blankly at the simple white cover of a simple white book, thinking idiotically that it's the same color as Rorek's hair and trying to wrap your mind around the idea that your lover is trapped in that simple white book, irrevocably sealed away until it falls into the hands of someone with enough power and compassion to break through the binding—which would require far more strength than even you possess, and you were the second mage of the realm, behind Rorek, who created this spell and has more knowledge of magic than you could ever hope to learn.
Ten minutes can be a bitter laugh and the tear silently rolling down your cheek, dripping off your chin to land on the snowy leather, leaving a watermark that you know will never completely fade, and somehow that seems oddly fitting. (If Rorek were here, he'd be furious—though not at you, never at you. But he's not, and that's the entire problem, the reason that a tear existed in the first place, isn't it?)
Another tear joins the first, and another. There are no violent sobs, no melodramatic wails: she simply sits there in the dirt and dust, letting the salty liquid stream soundlessly down her cheeks to as she reflects on the painful irony of life.
Too late. Always too late.