As ever, I love doing this challenge every year. Thank you so much to Hades Lord of the Dead for putting it on, and every one who has contributed their own prompts and stories! It's a pleasure to have so many talented writers in this challenge with me.
2022 was a good year, but also a difficult one. So my prayers and best wishes go out to all who lost someone last year, who struggled, that you may have someone by your side who reminds you to have hope. A new dawn will come.
Prompt from W. Y. Traveller: A new dawn.
"A new dawn is coming," I whispered. I knew Holmes could hear me. For all his head hung low in grief and pain, he would never be able to entirely divorce himself from that regard for small details which was instinctive to him.
Though he could hear me, he did not respond, and I was not surprised. Holmes, despite what I thought in our earlier days, and what I have written in the Strand, was not an emotionless machine. True, he did sometimes strive to act as though feelings had no sway over him, but I knew he felt deeply, or as I once put it, with a great heart to match his great brain. This day had not been easy for him.
"I know it will never be what it was, that you have lost someone impossible to replace." My thoughts drifted to a battered watch, a note by a waterfall, a pale hand slipping from my grasp to fall to our familiar bed. "Take the time you need, and I will stay with you. The sun still rises, and you are not alone."
We sat, and watched the dawn together.