Just Before Our Love Got Lost
A His Dark Materials Fanfiction
By Sister Grimm Erin
She did not love him for his handsomeness. No, Serafina Pekkala would never have loved Farder Coram for that. She did not love him for his youth, for the witch loved him still no matter how gray his hair was. She did not even love him for his strength, for his weakness drew her to him as Asriel's boldness and brashness had pushed her away.
She loved him for his kindness and for his patience. She loved him for his gentleness. She loved him for his bravery of the heart. She loved him for the way he demanded nothing—it made her want to give him everything. She loved him for his courage of body and flexibility of mind. She loved him for his craftiness and for his wisdom.
It would be simplest to say she loved him for his soul, and so that is what Serafina Pekkala tells Lord Asriel Belacqua when she informs she has no further interest in his affairs.
He has no reaction to speak off—in fact, he is even friendly, as friendly as Asriel can possibly be. But he gives her a cryptic send-off. She should have heeded it. She should have known exactly what he meant. She should have.
No, she shouldn't have. Because even the handful of years they had together made all the heartache worth it.
At any rate, Asriel told her, "We cannot change what we are, Serafina. Only what we do."
"For you, they are the same," she had replied. He had given her half a smile—sad yet acknowledging—and sometimes, Serafina chastises herself for not realizing immediately that the sadness was not due to the end of their affair.
But what difference would it have made? She would not trade the memory of the boat for anything.
X X X X X
Serafina Pekkala never married Farder Coram. She wanted to, but she knew her stipulation: no witch must ever marry, else her daemon fly away and never return.
But she bore him a son, Farvardin. She named him from the word in the desert tongue that meant 'guardian spirit.'
Farder asked her after she recovered from childbed whether she would have preferred a daughter. She whispered the truth into her lover's ear.
"I thought I would," Serafina told him in halting, slow breaths, "but now that he is here before me, I could not wish to change a bit of him."
He kissed her, for that. They lay back, wondering at the child that made their flesh one.
They did not have long to wonder.
X X X X X
Ten days later, young Farvardin contracted a fever.
Serafina Pekkala used every bit of medical knowledge she had. She tried herbs. She did sacred baths. She sang him to fitful sleep with ten different spells. She cursed. She cried out for the gods she used to worship. She loved him so ferociously and fiercely he had to live.
It made no difference in the end. He died in her arms on his fifteenth day of life, five days after contracting scarlet fever.
She just held Farvardin's body in her arms until he grew cold. Serafina was nearing her second century of life, but she had had precious little experience with death.
She remembered how she had scorned love. How she had wanted never to be hurt as her father had hurt her mother. How she never wanted to see anyone die the way her brother had.
When had she stopped fearing the mysteries of her own heart, and why on Earth had she so foolishly forgotten the possibility of pain?
Serafina Pekkala just sat there, quite unable to cry or move or breathe or do anything at all but think this was her fault for forsaking her clan, for falling in love enough to pretend to be a gyptian boat wife, for not heeding her mother's words, for not trying for a girl, for…
For loving him and her son so much that she didn't care about anything but them.
He held her hand quietly, saying nothing, his eloquence lost to the grave.
Serafina could not imagine any pain worse than the one she felt at that moment until the next morning.
X X X X X
Dedicated to a close friend.