the old woman''s view.
"You finally came," the old lady remains lying, turning her head to lift the arm drooping on the blanket, tremblingly reaching towards him.
This action reveals, oddly, a sort of girlish joy. "I knew you would come to see me for the last time."
The young man seems deeply moved: he strides into the candlelight range at the head of the old woman''s bed.
He looks no more than thirty years old. His pale gold curls have been cut shorter and now fall down both sides of his earlobes. His intricate attire has been stripped away, replaced by a fitted, new-style gentleman''s suit that is not particularly grand but decent and well-groomed.
"You''re still so young, so beautiful…" The old woman squints her eyes and scrutinizes him, sighing sincerely as she does every time they reunite. "And yet I have long gone grey."
"Is this truly our final reunion?" The young man looks intense, his lips shivering slightly. "The people in town told me that you are still very well and healthy."
"My body is something I am well aware of." The old woman smiles calmly, "Tonight, I am going to die. My heartbeats are slowing down; every few minutes, they diminish a bit more. My body is growing cold. A natural death in bed! In this time, aside from this kind of place, who can hope for such luck?"
Her amber eyes gazing into his have turned cloudy, yet still hold a glimmer.
The young man slowly lowers his body, kneeling by her bedside.
He holds the elderly''s drooping hand in both of his, and presses it to his lips in a gesture almost akin to piousness, leaving a kiss on that wrinkled and dim hand.
The kiss is so lasting and intense, that a devout believer would expect it to breathe renewed vitality into the frail body that could no longer sustain itself, reviving the youthful beauty in the wrinkled hand.
"Don''t be so agitated, and don''t shed tears! It would be considered impolite to mourn and weep for the death of so old a woman like me." The old woman chuckles. "You should bless me instead."
"I can''t bear to part with you," the young man whispers, his head hung low.
"Bless me, then."
"I bless you. You will have eternal, true liberty."
"It seems