I think that I'm almost

done. There are either one or two more chapters, not sure yet.

The one who was hollow from the beginning and doesn't understand human emotion finally begins to understand... and realizes that he is the only one who can end it all.

A Fading Star:

I sit in my grate, day and night, angrily watching the world. It is not that I don't like my host. Howl is one of the most amusing and interesting humans I have ever observed. And its not that I hate Sophie either... I resent her maybe…

It had been unfair laying so much on her shoulders when she was already going through so much herself. But she had been our only chance. And she had failed. I supposed part of it had been Howl's impetuous nature that had hindered her. Howl lived in the moment and he was, on the surface, rather selfish.

He should have been an only child, and was perhaps the spoiled youngest… But for him whatever was important was in the present and he often pushed the future out of his thoughts until it inevitably became the present.

And even though he knew that he and I were doomed without Sophie's help he still dragged her along on is own distracting schemes. And then, in trying to protect her at the end he doomed himself. Yes we destroyed the Witch and her fallen star but now we're in the same boat as they were who knows how long ago.

I wonder if they ever worried as we did. I wonder if they knew what they would become – or at least if the witch knew. Stars have seen these things happen time and again – have seen the pain as something so bright becomes something dark and foul.

And even though I fear this dark and foul fate, I wonder. I was saved by Howl from final Death: Absolute Darkness. And since darkness is the absence of light does it matter whether the darkness I succumb t is Absolute or what my human counterpart calls evil?

Either way what I was ends.

And the longer I go as I am, the longer I survive on this human heart, the more I find myself experiencing these human fears. As a star I had prepared myself for darkness. But Howl's humanity refused to prepare for anything.

I watch Sophie struggle through her own darkness and she is no longer the woman who I first met. But I sense that underneath her pain is the same determination that was always there. Although to what purpose it goes now I don't know.

Perhaps she is determined to live through this. Perhaps she is determined to stay… funny, Howl wouldn't have it any other way. And though I resent her presence I will not let her leave as long as Howl wants her.

They've begun that human thing of sleeping together. I expected her to fight him more. And I expected Howl to be more forceful. But the first time he kissed her, she let him. And if she doesn't go up to his bedroom at night, instead of raging like he does over smaller, pettier things, he just crawls in with her like a lost puppy.

I think if Sophie hadn't been too late to save us they would have married. I suppose it says something for Howl's character that he fell in love with her personality despite the visage that she had been trapped in by the Witch of the Waste.

And now he has entwined himself so thoroughly with her that it reminds me of our own bond. He is certainly draining her spirit, but it does not benefit him as his heart does me. She loses her light and fire and he watches it drain away and grasps all the more desperately.

He won't let her leave. She won't leave and neither of them can do anything to change it all. Howl can't end himself because even if he doesn't want to live anymore whatever made him save me won't let him destroy me now.

And so now I watch them huddled on the floor. She knocked the mop water over and Howl saw it as an attempt to escape. I couldn't help but react in fear when I saw the water coming. I thought he might finally kill her. Instead as she silently cried he panicked. Tried to comfort her, and watched, a lost child, unable to do anything.

He began crying as well. Now they shudder and gasp on the floor. Both helpless; unable to save themselves. And they don't even think to look to me for help. But I can't find it in me to resent that.

And now in the presence of two beings who are so empty and who so desperately want to end I begin to wonder if final darkness is as awful as I fear it is. I wonder what could be worse than the present.