She climbed to the top of the battlements, where she could always find some peace and solitude, her cloak wrapped round her in the wind. What had become of him? He had been left for dead. She looked out across the frozen landscape, and as she did, she saw a bird lifting up from the top of a distant tower. A crow perhaps; or, a raven delivering a message, she imagined. A seabird moving inland, away from a coming storm. How she admired them, the birds. No matter what happened on the ground below, they could always rise above it.