There is a throbbing pain at the base of his skull, black and blue bruises marring his body, and scrapes on his elbows and knees. He knows he is going to fall again before he lands on the ice with a thud. And still he laughs like a child, like he isn't a boy made a man too soon by the anguish of war, like he hasn't met the business end of a blade or been locked behind bars more times than he can count, like he has always lived between four safe walls with two pairs of loving arms for protection.
Cornelia gathers him in her arms with a smile. Her cheeks are flushed with the cold, her blue eyes lit violet as she gracefully maneuvers the slippy terrain. He wonders how someone with such an attachment to the soil could love the ice so much, and accepts that this is another part of her he will never quite understand.
He sees them on Meridian's frozen ponds in the winter, coming to Earth to skate in the springtime, envisions them together a thousand times more. As she holds him steady, Caleb is grateful that he and the girl with the earth in her veins can learn to forgive.
