“They have souls,” you had told me once the smoke had cleared from the estuary. “You saw how they grieve.” The other man, vested like an eel with eyes like a trench-dweller—whose thunderous blast took you away; I am loath to believe he has ever grieved. But the one I harmed today does not have such eyes. When you died, he looked at me, and in his gaze was my own horror reflected. Perhaps that is why I leapt for his throat.
