Eira
The house was too quiet.
Eira had only stepped out for a few minutes. Just long enough to catch her breath and rejuvenate her mind after a long day of hard work. But a pang of guilt followed her back inside. She shouldn't have left him. Even for a second.
Eira hung her heavy wool coat on the peg, the dampness of the fog clinging to her hair and causing tiny droplets of water to drizzle down her temple.
She didn't look at the chair by the window. She didn't want to see the way her father's eyes never moved. Fixed on a horizon that had set years ago.
'I can fix him,' she thought. 'Just find the right herb.'
The thought was a loop in her brain. She picked up a rag and began to scrub a beaker clean. She then pulled a mortar and pestle from the shelf, throwing in dried sunflower husks and a drop of distilled amber sap.
The rhythmic clink-clink-clink of the stone was the sound in the room. Eira frowned deep in thought.
'If I can just stimulate the optic nerve, maybe his lantern's flame will reignite. Maybe he'll blink. Just once.'
She slowly approached him with the steaming cup. "Drink this, Dad. It's warm."
There was no response. Not even the twitch of a finger. He sat there, his hands resting on his knees, eyes vacant and staring into nothing. She held the cup to his lips, but the liquid just pooled there. Tears of frustration began to blur her vision, her chest tightening with a familiar, hot spark of failure.
As Eira stood there, her eyes drifted to her father's lantern sitting on a platter. There was a smudge on the brass she hadn't noticed before. It was a strange, bruised-violet stain.
It looked like a thumbprint left by a shadow.
Perplexed, she rubbed at it with the damp rag, but the smudge stayed. She held it up to her own lemon-yellow lantern, squinting. The violet didn't reflect the light.
It was a color she'd never seen in any of her medicine jars or the village gardens. It felt wrong.
Where did this come from? Her mind raced back to the stories the physicians had told her. They said he was lost in a standard frost-storm. But frost didn't leave violet fingerprints. Frost didn't stain metal like an ink-spill of shadow.
She didn't know who that color belonged to, but she hated it. It felt like a thief's mark. A cold, heartless thing that had touched her father's life and left him empty.
She looked back at her father, then at the violet stain.
For the first time, the silence in the room didn't feel like misfortune, but instead like a crime. And she was the only witness left.