A/N: I originally wanted to take this further in this part, but progress slowed to a crawl when I decided I didn't want yet another long conversation scene. Hope you can chew on this bone while I figure out the best storytelling device for the meat.

"-. 278 AC .-"

Flying.

Just one moment felt like talking to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see him again. Like no other sculpture in the history of art, the dead balloon and dead airframe came to life at the touch of man's hand, and joined its life with his own.

Hot-air balloons had been the subject of Luwin's interest ever since he first learned about them, but for all his reluctance to get his hopes up, in truth he'd never expected flying in one to feel like all that much. Not after having dreamed of soaring high into the heavens on nothing but will, whether his or else's, never mind his oh so recent fiery experience. Flying in a balloon wasn't really flying, it was just… getting carried away.

Once the basket left the ground, though, it only took him one glimpse of the world beneath him to decide that no amount of dreaming was ever going to live up to it. Not for him. Luwin used to pity the skinchangers in those tales where they sent their minds into birds and never found their way back. Now, though, he didn't have it in him to judge them. The soul may be light as a feather, fluid as water, innocent as a child, but the way it responded to every movement of grace wasn't that much different than a floating balloon just like this one. Being carried aloft in soul and body, blown here and there by the wind, to go where the wind took him, it felt something like intruding on the domain of gods. Being awake and alive and solid made a world of difference. There was a savor of life and immortality in the substantial fare. Kind of like man in that way. A balloon was nothing till filled, but then and there, it was freedom. It was everything.

Were the ancestors watching? Did they feel proud? Did they feel envy that they never got to experience such a miracle in their gruelling travels across trackless lands in ancient times, when they looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air? How many gave themselves to their second lives willingly?

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward," Luwin murmured. "For there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

"Great saying, you should put it in writing," Lyanna said from where she was peering over the edge next to him. "Hey Martyn, can this thing go any faster?"

"Only if you don't mind crashing, My Lady."

"Aw nuts. Well, you're the one who said you were here to steer, so start steering! I have noble grace burning a hole in my sack and no subjects to throw it at!"

Luwin looked from the large sack taking up a third of the basket, to the twelve name days girl who could have gone flying at any time but decided to wait for Luwin as a get well gift. He wanted to thank her, but he knew she'd reflexively pretend it was just the latest in her feud with Benjen, completely missing that it only spoke even more strongly that she competed with her brother over who got to spend time with him. "This thing can steer?" He asked instead. It was well ahead of where Luwin expected the project to be right now. Or ever. There was no mechanism for it.

"Let's find out." Martyn fired the burner.

Lyanna Stark gushed excitedly as they ascended higher into the air. Then she outright squealed when the enormous airship abruptly changed direction from northwest to west proper.

They swung over the hills and towards the city and beyond, and Luwin got to witness how a man could be master of a craft, and how a craft could be master of an element. He saw the alchemy of perspective reduce his world, and all his other life, to grains in a cup. Flashes in the dark. He relaxed his death grip on the rim of the wicker basket and let himself learn all over again to listen and to feel. To put his trust in other hands than his. Of all the lessons he'd learned in is life, painfully or not, he didn't mind being reminded of this one that once used to guide his every act as a child. That no horizon was so far that you couldn't get above it or beyond it.

If only the experience wasn't so much more bitter than sweet. Alas, he wasn't able to see anything without spending precious vitality. He tried to distract himself from the accursed blindness by asking Martyn to explain exactly what he was doing, which the man quite gladly obliged. Luwin had been right, the balloon had no built-in mechanism for steering. It could use the direction of the wind to steer itself though. 'Steering' meant raising or lowering the balloon to whatever height served to take them where they wanted to go, as the wind blew differently at different altitudes.

Soon he was left without that diversion, however, so he went back and did his best to see. Alas, he could barely scrounge up enough energy to catch a glimpse of the world below him every once in a while. The air up there was so very clean. In every way. There was barely any miasma to cleanse and burn as fuel so far away from crowds and people. The meadows had already been sparse in muck to purify and absorb compared to the city. This high up everything was almost blessedly clear. Which stopped being the case some height further, he knew, but the balloon couldn't get anywhere near that height. He hoped.

Luwin wondered if there was anyone else in the world with an occult foundation so backwards that they were dependent on literal spiritual waste to function. What an ironic turn to his great achievement. It was an unfair thought, he knew, as he hadn't exactly charged up, so to speak, and it wouldn't have been a problem regardless without his sudden blindness. Regret, it seemed, cared not whether it was warranted or not.

Luckily, Martyn wasn't Luwin's only human resource. Lyanna Stark was quite the chatterbox too, when there wasn't a Benjen or Brandon Stark nearby to feel completely unjustifiably overcrowded by.

"Everything looks so small from up here! Martyn, I'm not joking, I'm not kidding, and I'm not playing – I need to be over Winterfell right now. I have a dream locked in my heart that I want to let out!"

"We'll get there when the wind gets there, my lady."

"Well tell the wind to get a move on."

"I'm afraid the forces of nature don't listen to a common guard like me. Why don't you try, my lady?"

"You know, I really like being a princess-" trust Lyanna stark to commit treason "-but some days I really wish I could be a fairy. Then maybe I'd finally get listened to for once. I already asked the wind, but it ignored me. It's too busy playing fire pipes. If you listen really quietly, you can hear the music playing in the furnace mouths." They couldn't even see the furnaces yet, they were half a mile on the opposite side of Winterfell. "Can you hear it, Luwin? You're blind now, so you have to. The other senses get better when you lose one, right?"

Luwin faced her with his blindfolded eyes for twice as long as was polite. "Shouldn't you have outgrown being this callous?"

"I can give you a hug instead if you want. Do you need a hug?"

Her siblings would have just given him one without asking. "Actually, I need pancakes." After all the infirmary fare, he'd even take them without syrup. "But I'll take the hug."

"Not if it's your second option you don't – oh wow…"

Fire and flame, let him see… They'd finally crested the walls of Winterfell.

Luwin's breath stalled. The sight of it from above… The walls, the turrets, the gatehouses, the Institute with its central amphitheatre, the Great Keep further in, even the Pharos looked small from on high. And they had gotten very high indeed, they had to be above one thousand feet at least. The sight of all that from so high above… Luwin had no words.

"Can you guess what color I'm thinking of? It starts with g and ends in ish. It's grayish-brownish!" Speechlessness was not among Lyanna Stark's problems. "Let's name animals! Horse, poney, ram, Benjen, goat-"

"My lady."

"I was wrong, it's not a Benjen, it's a donkey!"

"My lady!"

"Don't 'my lady' me! I have the rest of my life to be perfect. Well, except when I make mistakes. But we can blame that on my emotions. Oh, my sack, my sack!" Where was Bran the Builder to freeze the ice in his veins when he needed it? "Martyn, we're going too fast!"

"We're going as the wind goes, my lady."

"Oh, who needs you anyway!" Lyanna managed to hoist the sack almost as big as her half-way over the side. "There."

They drifted.

"My lady," Martyn ventured. "Are you having trouble with your sack?

"No."

"…Then?"

"You let me tease my subjects, minion!"

"If I had a copper for every time you called me that-"

"You'd still be poor. Copper's not really money, it's more of an insult."

"No, an insult is what you're doing to the shmucks below."

"Yup."

"So you're just being annoying?"

"Yup."

"I suppose not all girls mature faster than boys," Luwin said with all the bravado of a man who'd bitten god in the arse and got away with just a paltry maiming. "Even boys two years their junior."

"You take that back right now or I'll-"

"We're almost past Winterfell."

"NO! Wait, I still got time, just gotta-there!"

Fire and flame.

The world below was inundant with the petals of cherry blossoms.

Luwin swayed on his feet, and this time it wasn't just from the strain. The change in mood from below made him shudder with goosebumps. Only Martyn's quick action stopped him from tipping over the edge. So oft did Lyanna Stark play the typical, entitled lace curtain, but then she went and did something that left you breathless with amazement. Astonished. Touched.

Impulsively, Luwin cast forth his familiar. It latched onto the first flutter of pink it could see, and for the next while Luwin got to experience the world as a cherry blossom petal. The freedom as it fluttered free of all restraints, not needing to breathe or feed or think. The cool air bearing him aloft. The tug of gravity that meant nothing. Twice he almost brushed against other petals. Both times the air twisted him that he slipped past just so. It felt like he was taunting the gods themselves all over again, almost. And when he finally reached the world below, he landed on the face of a child and got to experience being the most exciting, amazing, most important thing that ever happened to someone. Bliss. Happiness. Ecstatic peace.

He lived as a second cherry blossom, then a third and another and another until he landed inside the hot maw of a blast furnace left idle by its now thoroughly distracted handlers. The sudden destruction of his physical shell tossed Luwin back into his body like crashing awake from a dream.

That… That had been positively addicting.

He'd slid down the basket wall to sit at some point. Martyn Cassel was a blotch of alert concern in front of him, while next to him Lyanna Stark was emphatically waving down at her adoring crowd. Loud cheers reached them from below. Then even louder cheers and laughter as the girl sprinkled a bevy of blue rose petals amidst the sea of pink she'd cast forth.

Martyn fired the burner again, and they rose until the wind turned from westward to north.

They left Winterfell behind to the sound of 'The Lady Lyanna!' being acclaimed to all corners of the world, and the girl in question yelling gloating jeers at her younger brother who she'd finally spotted somewhere. It only made the people even merrier, which Luwin hadn't thought was possible. He watched Lyanna Stark, this childlike patch of magnanimity still so self-centred in its innocence that had effortlessly made the people envy and love her with just one gesture.

He supposed this was one way to make Luwin's blindness less bitter. There was no way anything on the remainder of their journey would measure up to this. There was little for him to lose out on that he couldn't live without, or wait for.

"That mangy beast! He wolf-whistled at me, can you believe it? My own baby brother! Sometimes I wish I were a wolf too, but instead I'm a big sister."

Lyanna Stark, as ever, was completely ignorant of the impact she had on the people around her.

Their trip took just over an hour. It might have been less, but Martyn was still mastering the trick of finding and staying in the steer zone, that altitude where below them was the left turn and above them the right. Which could easily be the reverse. None of them minded though. They weren't exactly in any rush to end the experience. Even Lyanna, who became bored quicker than any of them, didn't actually want the ride to end. She took to playing eye spy on everything below instead, which worked wonders on Luwin's ability to look with his soul's eyes only when he needed to.

They actually followed or paralleled the road for a fair part of the trip, to the amazement of the occasional cart and rider. It used to be a normal dirt path like all the others, but it had since been paved over. The drainage camber and apertures weren't obvious from above, but Lyanna Stark had a lot to say about the twists and turns, and how the footpaths, bridleways and drainage weren't perfectly straight or wide enough apart in places.

"That's because aesthetics weren't the point," Luwin explained. "You've been on the new Cerwyn road, did it have the same issue?"

"Well no. At least I don't think so, we'll have to go on another balloon ride to be sure!"

"What about the materials, was it made in sections like this one, or was it all the same?"

"Well, the stones weren't all the same but I guess it was all the same."

"The Cerwyn road was laid along an accurately surveyed course, and was even cut through hills in places. There are plans to extend it further, conducted over rivers and ravines on bridgework." There were very long-term but concrete plans to build a whole network of them throughout the North, even in the Neck where sections could be supported over marshy ground on rafted or piled foundations. If the crannogmen agreed to that vulnerability, which they were proving very reticent towards. "The reason it looked better is because it is. It was made to higher standards, and most importantly with the lessons learned from making this one. This path was and is the testing ground. That's why parts of it are metalled instead of paved, and why it has sections that are shaped differently, or even colored differently. It's all to see which different combinations of materials and techniques will serve the North best."

"Oooh," Lyanna marvelled. "Is that why they made it all the way last spring but then didn't make more?"

"Just so."

"Well I hope they learned all the right lessons, this road is a mess."

A 'mess' that was still better than any dirt path made by dragging longs behind a pair of oxen. "Why don't you describe what you see and I'll say how and why they were made?"

Lyanna did so with surprising enthusiasm, so Luwin got a fairly accurate report about the state of the various road sections with minimal input from Martyn, and without needing to unduly waste his energy on seeing everything himself. The parts made with big, flat slabs set in Marwyn's summerstone looked the best, but the ones made with Lord Brandon's recipe seemed to have held out just as well, so any differences in endurance were probably a matter of at least decades. The paved or cobbled sections that used slag cement were fine as well, through the gaps between the stones looked somewhat darker to Lyanna's eyes, deeper, so it may be more vulnerable to erosion, at least in the current mixture. The brick sections made from red mud were the most surprising – they had cracked and come loose more than everything but the metalled parts, but the road surface was still quite level even after the largest springmelt in Luwin's memory. In comparison, the sections made entirely of slag summerstone had cracked the most, even in those patches where the snowmelt didn't dig right through the agger beneath. Even Marwyn's summerstone didn't hold out perfectly there. Between that and the state of the poured roads in Wintertown, it seemed that all-summerstone roads were less than ideal. Especially since the Valyrian mixture was fairly costly at grand scale without indestructibility via dragon's breath to make it worth it.

There were a lot of implications about short-term versus long term use, small-scale versus large-scale, and what was worth pursuing when you factored in maintenance expenses on top of local material availability. Luwin was able to make a lesson out of it and even managed to keep Lyanna from noticing until near the end of their trip, though he would readily admit he would have failed without the distraction provided by that thrush that dropped by to hide from the goshawk that wasn't persuaded to seek other prey until he ate her lunch and got all the chest scratches he wanted and not one more, Luwin was really starting to wonder about that girl.

They spied their destination somewhat later than Luwin thought they would due to the tree cover, but they saw the furnace smoke and heard the drop hammer a fair bit before that. Both were things a mere farmer's hamlet had no business having when even trip hammers barely saw the outside of towns, but that was the point. Crofter's Village didn't quite deserve its name anymore now that it hosted all the resources, facilities and staff involved in the North's first railway station.

Railways were another logistical snarl in the making, though Luwin was hopeful it would be at least a good interim alternative to roads after learning how quickly they could be built in comparison. Especially compared to Marwyn's which took half a year to reach proper strength. It remained to be seen if the things could get by despite having the ground beneath the bearers washed away every spring.

There was a horse-drawn train getting ready to depart when they came into sight, the wagons mostly loaded with wood processing tools – replacements, no doubt, for the work crews clearing timber deeper in the forest. Winter was too near to hope reaching Deepwood Motte before the change in seasons, but weather willing they might just make it to Ironrath in time for the harvest festival. Luwin wondered how House Tallhart were doing on this front, they'd sent word about intending to start a rail on their end just before Luwin was indisposed.

The work crew and everyone else looked up and took their hard hats off when they spotted them. Then Luwin got to live through their flight over Winterfell writ small, because Lyanna had saved some of her cherry blossom supply just for them.

"They love me," said the girl as they finally left even them behind. "They love me, they really love me!"

Hopefully her husband will love her just as easily.

In their wake, the train coach set off south, not west. What was there that…? Oh, Silverpine Tower. Lord Stark must have commissioned a connection to Master Winterstone while Luwin was incapable. He was surprised, unless a railway to the Wolfsriver was also being made. It made sense though, Master Varr had proven a very useful source of information on the wants, needs and means of the merchants and commoners, and his lands were where many of their inventions had been and were still being developed and field tested. It ensured the new, loyal house could cobble together a solid economic base from the viable projects at no expense of their own, while also providing several degrees of separation between invention and practical application that spies needed to work past.

Master Varr had become quite passionate about supplying glassworkers last Luwin heard. Which was no surprise. Northern glass, and particularly northern lenses, had reached such a level of notoriety that the Sealord of Braavos had come out and let Lord Rickard haggle him all the way up to loaning Braavos's best shipwrights in exchange for just ten years of exclusive rights to distribution in Essos. Thumbing Myr's nose was just that important to the man, it seemed. The swing factor had been the hardened glass that the Institute Maesters and local craftsmen had managed to make by mixing the standard recipe with certain byproducts from alum production. Since Master Varr had been the first man to host dolostone processing (Lord Stark had been very prompt in taking advantage of a new demesne with no outstanding ties or obligations, Cerwyn overlords aside), he was well on the way to becoming wealthier than a fair chunk of the North's proper lords. If the latter sat on their laurels while he left them behind, that is.

Lord Rickard could be very pointed in his 'incentives.'

"We're here!" Lyanna cried, half disappointed and half excited. "There's mom! And dad! And Mister Doghouse!And Bran too, I guess..."

Who on earth was – Marwyn? "Mister Doghouse?"

"Because he's always in the doghouse, duh. Mind you, he seems to like it, so to each his own I guess."

'Mister Doghouse' he mouthed to Martyn silently. The man gave him a look as dead as a cold pan in response, released the canopy vent at the balloon's top and busied himself with the descent. Luwin was torn between being offended and cringing guiltily at immediately thinking how much better fit Hother was for that nickname.

Probably better not to think about it at all.

Crofter's Village was located between two lakes. It used to be made up of just a few huts, a longhall, and a watchtower by the lakeshore. Now, the longhall could sit a hundred people instead of fifty, and the village itself had more than doubled in size too, the temporary dwellings of the workmen having long since stopped being temporary even if some of the workmen themselves still were. The farmers were still very much there though. They were hard at work plowing and sowing what would likely be the last crop before winter returned. They all stopped ad gawked at them to the last child, prompting Lyanna to send them the most overstated air kisses that Luwin had ever witnessed.

"Muah. Muah! And a muah to you too! And you get a kiss, and you get a kiss, and you get a kiss, everybody gets a kiss!"

They loved it.

"Careful, My Lady," Martyn said dryly. "Any more of this and you'll be the second most beloved form of entertainment in the North, right after hockey."

"Oh you shut up and land us already."

She didn't dispute it? Amazing. Lyanna Stark showing self-awareness. The world truly had changed.

It was towards the larger lake that Martyn took them, to the biggest of the small wooded islands dotting it, the one with an ancient weirwood heart tree growing on it. There, though not one of them wanted the ride to end – never mind their fuel supply – they touched the ground once again. Well, hit it more like. It was not a graceful touchdown in the least. Fortunately, the wicker showed its worth and no one was injured, even if Lyanna was the only one whose tumble out of the basked could be described as graceful.

"Mom, dad, I flew! See, I told you there was nothing to worry about, the only one who almost fell out was Luwin, but even he didn't manage it!"

Lyanna Stark was a mean girl.

"-. 278 AC .-"

To Luwin's surprise, the balloon spent barely any time on the ground. There were skinchanged ravens available to reset the canopy vent, there was fuel waiting for them, and after a deluge of excited chatter and hugs and kisses with her family that were far too flamboyant to be as rote and long-suffering as she claimed, Lyanna Stark dragged her mother up into the basket for a second trip. Luwin was briefly dismayed that Martyn wouldn't be there for something that he really needed to be there for, but he calmed down when Hallis Mollen took his place.

"I hope you can forgive my daughter," were Lord Stark's first words to him once the balloon was up and away. "I am reasonably confident she did not mean cruelty by making you take your first flight before you were well enough to enjoy it. I hope she at least showed the proper courtesy when making the offer."

So physically hauling him out of Winterfell without a by your leave was not how the man had told his daughter to approach her grand 'plan'. "… As much as she usually does." Luwin certainly knew what to hold over her head next time he wanted her to behave herself. He glanced behind Lord Stark and back. "How fares your son?"

"Not well." Lord Stark admitted. "We have to cajole him into most things. If I don't have him doing something, he broods. If we leave him alone for any length of time, he wallows. He never wallowed, he never did that even when he was small and mad."

"So all this?"

"You can watch see the people out on the fields from here. I thought seeing for himself how much of a difference he's made for even the smallest man would help his mood. Unfortunately, I severely misjudged his standards. We're apparently still barbarians compared to how he envisions things. Some of the things he said about a proper farmer's life sound practically magical even compared to what we get as high nobility."

"Well…" This really was a conundrum. "At least he sounds more like himself?"

"This side of him was never exactly a comfort."

"Better than wallowing."

"I know." But his tone didn't match the words. "I hope so..."

Brandon Stark was throwing boomerangs. Very hard and very wide. They circled the entire island before returning to sender, at least when they avoided the environmental hazards and wild growth. Those that stuck in the Weirwood branches were retrieved by ravens. Those that fell in the lake were fin-slapped back to shore by trouts and pikes – fire and flame – with a little help from Marwyn coaxing the eddies here and there. Then there were the throws that didn't quite return to point.

Brandon Stark sprung from his place, jumped off the heart tree's eyebrow and caught the boomerang mid-leap before landing a tad too lightly to be natural. The strength of ten men could make you leap quite high indeed, but it didn't make you fly. There was nothing that stood out to Luwin's second sight though, so at least the Young Lord's veil was back to standard.

"We do what he can to keep him busy," Lord Rickard said quietly. "But at this point I'm honestly hoping you have something big to distract him with. Or enrage him beyond the point of apathy, I'd be fine even with that at this point."

He had all that and then some, but all the same... "Bigger than me being maimed for life through means unknown that I've yet to be asked about by anyone, perhaps?"

"I trust you to know when to volunteer information." Luwin's chest tightened- "Which predates this entire mess, just so we're clear." -then loosened into a feeling of comfort he'd thought beyond hope for years.

"… Thank you, my lord."

"You are welcome, Luwin. Truly." The man's icy mien seemed to thaw for a brief moment. "I'd planned to make a poignant occasion out of it just between the two of us, but events got away from me."

It was at that point that they came within talking distance.

"Hello Luwin," Brandon Stark said. "How was the flight?"

"Scattered in bits and pieces."

"Good to know my sense of humor is as feeble as the rest of me feels," the young man said dryly. "And what about you?"

"I know what happened to you."

Brandon Stark completely lost track of the boomerang as if he didn't have eyes in the back of his head, just in time for it to smash him in the-

"No."

- barely miss his skull at a bark from Marwyn who staggered vaguely into its suddenly altered flight path. "Young Master, please be more mindful! Random gusts of wind won't come out of nowhere to save you when it counts."

"They will if you're here."

"Well… yes, but still. And you!" Marwyn rounded on Luwin before faltering. "… Oh, I still can't be mad at you."

"Not even on my behalf apparently," Brandon Stark mildly told Luwin. "That's kind of a big deal."

"Though not as big as what you just claimed, Maester," said Lord Stark. "Why don't you get off your feet and explain? We have a seat prepared for you here."

"I'll be grateful for it."

The seat was really just one of the bigger and older pieces of petrified weirwood that had been carved into a vaguely level bench and placed on the only patch of waterfront that ended in anything resembling shallows. Lord Stark sat right across from him on the fanciest folding chair Luwin had ever seen, while Lord Brandon went instead to sit on the much steeper shore nearby with his feet in the water. Marwyn sat near him in the nearest spot he found that put him at a lower height than him (of course), quiet but ready in case a gust of wind had to come out of nowhere again. The last of their party, meanwhile, made to give them privacy.

"Martyn," Luwin called. "Stay. This concerns you as well."

Lord Stark glanced at him sharply, but after a long moment he nodded to Martyn to do as Luwin said, which the man did with considerable confusion.

"The Valyrians were devious," Luwin began. "They were very good at making other people pay the price for their ambition. And they were just as good at making sure their tools would always serve their own ambition first. I can now categorically say that glass candles are not an exception to this."

There was trial in being the centre of attention, but there was also power. There was a world of difference between having someone's attention and being the only subject of someone's attention. Especially when that someone had more power to spare than you could hold. For the first time since waking up, Luwin felt like he was gaining more strength than he was spending. Fire and Flame, let him exert the fullness of his strength.

The glass candle's ghost manifested before him, visible even to Martyn Cassel's normal sight.

"The night of the surgery I succeeded in fully fathoming the glass candle for the first time." Luwin said when everyone was too riveted on the sight to speak up. "And in grasping the full craftsmanship of it, everything known and unknown about it was revealed to me. Including the backdoor."

There was trial and power both to being the centre of attention. Power enough to lay open the plots of those long dead, whose strings still made men and beasts both dance to the tunes of those that the world would be better off dead with, more's the pity.

"I have much and more to say, some of which may challenge notions of who and what one might be beholden to. But in the interests of there being no confusion as to what obligations relative to dispensing truth I am now beholden to, I will get the main points out of the way first. The only thing greater than Dragonlord deviousness was their ambition. The Doom of Valyria did not break magic, it was a consequence of it. Glass candles are not beacons, they are doorways to the reason for all of it. And Rodrik Cassel got himself executed on purpose." Luwin looked right at Brandon Stark then. "For you."

Luwin used to fantasise about this, of commanding his masters' respect and attention and dread. Now that the dream was finally coming true, he found that he had more important things to think about.

"It wasn't some monster or foe that maimed you. Cassel's the one who cut you, and he did it to save your life."