#(that's where those lyrics came from) and suddenly thought 'Heeeeeyy now...'

[theimpossiblescheme]

Swaddled in his coat, the thick fur collar wreathed around her head and her arm pulled into the long, heavy sleeves, Mina looks so like a child.  Knees pulled up to her chest as she lay on her side by the fire, visibly trying not to toss and turn against the rough ground.  No lines on her face save for the burn on her forehead, but the light of the fire throws the shadows under her eye into sharp relief, and her features are pinched into the sort of fear that pierces an old man’s heart.  The sort of fear he’d hoped to spare her.  It is hard to reconcile the calm, graceful, divinely patient, and devilishly clever woman she’d been before, all racing mind and sweet words, with this lost creature laying at his side.  It feels too cruel a reversal, to try and offer her comfort now when she had given it so freely only days before.

But Abraham has already failed her dearest friend, and sweet Lucy’s death still casts a pall over the whole company, even for all his efforts.  He will redouble them for Mina’s sake.  It is enough to know he might never see John or the brave Arthur again… a third loss may be his undoing.  It is all he can do to keep from imagining his own long-loved, long-lost faces in their place.

He stays silent as he pulls another wrap of furs from the wagon about his shoulders and straightens where he sits, signaling his intent to stay up and keep watch.  Mina’s head moves in what’s almost a nod before lolling heavily aside, just inches from him.  Tempting as it is to haul her into his lap as he would a small girl or run a hand over her unbound dark curls, Abraham abstains.  He will not touch her if she does not wish it–her cries upon having the wafer pressed to her skin still ring in his ears.  As do the resolute declarations of love and soothing hums from her husband shortly thereafter as he held her.  What would their Jonathan think to see her now, he wonders… and quickly resolves that it must not be so.  He will not leave her side tonight, and he shall return Mina to him as she was–bright and lovely, her energy and light restored.

This new oath is a balm, if only a slight one, to such an aching, weary old breast as his, and for the first time in hours he lifts his voice, hoarse with disuse, but gentle enough that only she can hear…

“’k Heb U altijd van noode, dag en nacht, slechts uw genâ verwint des boozen macht. Wie kan als gij mijn gids en sterkte zijn? Blijf bij mij, Heer, in nacht en zonneschijn!”