She danced.
The wind was swirling everywhere, a tempest, and yet she kept dancing, laughing as the grass brushed against her knees and her hair was swept about her face. She danced, hopping from one foot to the other, bells on her ankles jingling with each step.
And he watched, silently, as she danced.
He felt cold, even beneath his heavy red jacket. He wasn't sure whether it was a feeling inside, or out.
But still he watched, sitting on the slope of a grassy hill, chin on his knees and arms wrapped around himself, as she twirled this way and that, seeming almost thrown by the wind. Fluid movements that entranced him, that he followed with his dark chestnut eyes. And the way her hair sparkled in the sunlight, the rays bouncing off the beads kneaded into every strand.
Watching her dance, he felt only at peace. He felt as if there was nothing to worry for, nor anything to care for. There was nothing but empty peace. It should not have made him cold. But it did.
It was a day he would carry in his memory forever, even when he simmered into a thousand pyreflies and was forgotten. He would remember watching, watching her dancing.
And she would remember too, how he slowly made his way up the hill to her. She would remember laying with him in the grass, her dazzling eyes watching as he slept, a poor, weary man with a grip on life so tight he may have forgotten how to let go. She never cried. She only smiled, smiled and watched.
Some time later, he chose there. He awoke harshly and knew it was time. Knew he had to go there.
He ran, stumbling over the roots of trees and pushing through leafy branches, ignoring the scrapes on his face and the pain on his bare, calloused feet. He didn't stop.
He found her there, standing atop the hill, watching the dark, cloudy sky and still, as ever, smiling.
Even when she touched a hand to his face, his scarred, worn, tired, fading face, she refused to cry. But he could see it there, in those endless pools of emerald. He could see her fading right with him. And how it broke his heart.
They never spoke. She merely held on to him, fingers entangled in his ebony hair, and watched him.
There were no words exchanged when he faded. When he finally left her. And when he was gone, when all vestiges of him were gone, she turned. She closed her watchful eyes.
And she danced.