Now, when they hold their soul gems, they can't look at them the same way as they did before. Knowing that someday they will turn into the same grief seeds that sustain them puts everything in a different perspective.

"Are you going to be okay?" he asks gently after they have both fallen into a solemn sort of silence. In truth, he doesn't even know yet if he will.

"I guess," she sighs. Then, in a stronger tone, "Yeah. I'm going to be okay. And I'm going to be a magical eldritch terror the rest of you will have to take down, too—but, you know, some things are inevitable."

The silence that falls now hangs heavier around them this time. What is he supposed to say to that?

"What do you think we'll be like as witches?" she asks suddenly, leaning back and holding her soul gem up near her face so that it catches the light in her view.

"Wh—what?" That doesn't seem very like her, he thinks, it doesn't seem very like anybody to give that kind of question about the death nobody was supposed to have so bluntly and so soon .

Her eyes fixated on the shine of her gem, she murmurs in response, "I hope there are flowers in my barrier."

(There are; when it finally happens he is in a garden maze, screaming at her to stop fucking around, her friends are here, she's not alone, come back, come back, and as he ducks away from the jaws of a rampaging familiar, he tramples marigolds underneath his feet.)