"He had both hands."

Having given up any hope of sleeping, Wynn Derreko emerged from her tent to find her cousin also awake.

Rest, it seemed, had eluded him as well. Derrah was staring listlessly into the flames, his hand resting on the poker.

She approached the circle of felled logs surrounding the fire and crouched beside him. "Growing wings?"

Derrah sighed, and drew the poker through the embers halfheartedly. "Just a dream I had. About Yaneth."

Hearing the name alone was enough to send a chill down Wynn's spine. "Why are you dreaming about... him?" She couldn't bring herself to say it. Yaneth hated both of them—and with good reason; he'd been maimed during a duel with Wynn some years past, in what could by no stretch of the imagination be called an accident. At that moment he was being detained by her family to save face, no doubt thinking up all manner of revenge.

"We were allies," he continued, "friends even. By some means that the dream didn’t find necessary to specify, we’d put the past behind us." He paused, tilting his head up to look her in the eye. “He had both hands.”

Wynn felt a stab of guilt. It seemed unjust that such life altering mistakes could be, and often were, made in the passion of youth. Maybe we could have been friends, if we’d not been so “thorough”. But he’ll never forgive us now.