Her finger tips brushed against his lips as he tried to speak. Her eyes calming his thoughts as he lay here reclined and swaddled in the arms of this angel. The peaceful feeling Ryder had was only momentary. It was broken by the line of tear, falling from the radiant blueness of her eyes. The tear changed those eyes somehow, from the blue of a summer sky, to the deep liquid of blue oceans he had only seen in photographs. He watched as the tear left the corner of her eye, leaving a hint of its path along her cheek. His finger came to it as it pooled low on the line of her jaw.

What possessed him to draw that tear across his own lips was uncertain. The contrast of it left him puzzled. It was of no tear he had experienced before. This tear was not salty on the tongue as others, but sweet like the bottles of spring water he enjoyed on hot summer days. It also changed him. That tear cleansed him. Washing away the hidden memory of the accident, the shrill crying of the sirens, all of the things lying somewhere in the darkness of his mind was gone.

"I have held you," her voice almost whisper like began. "Much like this before. I was powerless to do anything at that time." Her tears came stronger now, swelling to pools in the corners of eyes before cascading downward. "I held you, powerless against the cold growing through your body. I can not bring to bear the pain of doing it yet again."

Ryder, loosing the comfort he held wrapped in her arms, lifted himself to sit before her. The setting he was in, tranquil and washed from the odor of exhaust and pollution seemed no place for tears. Yet they fell from her eyes, and he, was apparently the cause. The appetite of his mind devoured everything around him in a desperate attempt to understand. He had many questions, but now was not the time to find the answers. The time for those answers would come if he could simply sit and listen. A task he currently didn’t feel quite up to at the moment.

"His sword was sure as it ran you through." She began. "It was the glint of the steel I remember most. How it matched the glint of evil in his eyes. That and the tint of the blade in the sun, as it wore your blood." Her eyes, welled with tears not yet fallen, turned to the ground. Her breath was deep and long. Ryder sat silent, consumed by her words, and held helpless by her tears. He waited as she paused, his eyes never parting the point where hers made contact with his. The glow of the sun breathed through hair. The slow rush of a breeze soft and gentle rustled the leaves above. The light on the ground began to dance in time with the song of the rustling leaves. Moments had passed, and yet somehow they seemed and eternity. Again her eyes rose once again to meet his. "It was planned that way you know. He planned to find us there, his punishment to be carried out on us both. The day we were to be lost together, forever missing from that place."

Ryder searched his mind for the memories she spoke of. He searched into the depths of his soul but nothing was found. He wanted to find something, anything that would bring that past to his present. What he needed was her name, and the way to find it, was to ask.