She's dead. That's almost funny. Not in the laughing 'ha ha' sense, but in the ironic one? Sure. Get a load of them, just two walking corpses having a conversation in a pagan shrine on a stormy night. Someone's definitely written this short story and has already had it rejected from a dozen magazines.

"I do." He's almost positive. Or he's almost positive that he thinks he does. That's probably as close as anyone gets when it comes to memory. "I wasn't dead yet, but I think we might be the only two people who know that."

See? Funny.

(No. The doesn't feel quite right. Is someone looking for him?)

The waterskin and hatchet are set aside. Wake draws a packet from inside his coat. It's warm from the heat of his own body, and the residual touch of the same magic that's dried his clothes and stripped the water from the back of Wake's neck. He hesitates for just a moment. Is this too literal? Too cliche? Is he putting too much of himself into this? It's dangerous to put himself forward like this.

But only for a moment. Then, Wake unfolds the vellum paper. He doesn't re-read the poisonous thing written there before setting it on the flat slab of the shrine's altar among the trace remains of other older offerings. Bird bones. The stiffened body of a gutted rabbit. A cup that might have once been filled and now is just dirty. Taking the hatchet up, Wake makes a nick in his finger. He smears the blood over the words. Afterward, the whole thing is doused in the contents of the waterskin—water from the summoning pool reducing the handmade paper to little more than discolored pulp in a matter of seconds.

It's not wine, or fruit, or an animal's body. But it is specific. It feels right.