He climbed effortlessly, the sheer and mossy stone no hindrance at all. Despite the cold temperatures, his fingers cast about the cliff until it found purchase, then another pull had him another hand span higher.
With methodical steps, he finally eclipsed the lip of the precipice and swung up until his feet found purchase. The faint layer of snow melted beneath his boots and he brushed himself off, then pulled the stone he had retrieved out of his pocket. Ambling over to the little mound of stones off to one side, he carefully lay the rock atop the mound, balancing it as carefully as one might the steeple on a house of cards.
Thirteen stones now made up this stack. It did not even reach halfway up his shin.
“Nee, do you think she should have just taken it easy?” the girl had asked.
They had sat there, watching the snow fall over the river, smiling at their own breath as it came out in wispy clouds from their mouths. He had carried her all the way out here, along the road at the riverbank and then up the cut stone to the top of the cliff. They had hid behind the shelter of a tree, away from the eyes of those that owned the land, and watched in silence as the winter evening had passed on by.
“Who?” he had asked.
She had looked at him, all contemplative eyes and teasing smile, a slight twitching to her nose against the cold air. “In the myth, you know. When we came up here, it was simple as taking it slow and easy, right?”
He had nodded, sagely, though they both knew it was all for show. “That certainly makes sense.”
She had fallen silent for a while longer, and as the light in the sky darkened, he began to feel fear as the minutes and seconds counted on. He had no concept of years, then, as his life had been too short by normal measure and even shorter by how he perceived his world. The world had opened up to him as he waited there, and he realized, slowly or too fast to comprehend, how lonely it was.
The sound of a boat off in the distance, a fog-horn to alert others of its presence.
Motion had caught his eye, and he turned to watch as she pulled a large stone from within her jacket. It was large and flat, and he wondered why he had not felt it when carrying her up. She held it out to him.
He had taken it, his hand brushing against hers, somehow even smaller when held to such a stone. “Hm?”
“Don’t be like her. Build up slowly, you know, with something good like this at the bottom.”
“Okay.” Briefly, he had left her side to find a place suitably out-of-the-way, yet still within clear sight of the river and placed the stone on the ground. He then glanced around, first up the river, then down, then back inland, marking his position mentally.
He would remember that place forever.
Upon returning to her side, he had finally taken note of how ghostly she had become, the contrast with her dark coat all the more apparent. He moved to put his shoulders to hers, and she had curled up carefully against him, her motions slow and lethargic.
“Did you ever hate me?” she asked, and her voice had seemed even smaller than her hands.
He had looked to her, again, uncomprehending, watching as the wisps from her breath grew fainter.
“For leading you astray, mister boatman?” She seemed to laugh to herself at that, her shoulders shaking faintly.
He had pressed his cheek against the crown of her head. “It’s really my own fault, isn’t it? I ought to have my eyes on where I’m going right now, not on the heights to impossible to climb.”
Another shake of the shoulders. “So my beauty and song had nothing to do with it.”
“Not a bit.”
A deeper, stronger wisp floated about, and he had thought for certain that she would stay on that joke. But a moment later, she had said, “Seriously. Answer seriously.”
He had understood the meaning of the question by then, though, and shook his head. “No.”
Even if it had been to his doom.
He could never have blamed her, never hated her.
“Then…I’m glad,” she had said, her shoulders hitching slower than before. “I’m glad Shirou doesn’t hate me.”
Slowly, he had put his arm around Illya’s tiny shoulders and held her to his chest.
They stayed like that. He, until sunrise. She, until twilight.
He stood there now, the mound of stone that he had marked years before at his feet, snow slowly forming over it, like the white that had shot into his hair. Each had been from one of the places he had since visited, each from a field stained by the same sorrow and hatred that had made up her life.
He wasn’t sure how different he could have made those places, or how different they had become because of him.
He just knew he had to take it slowly.
Even if he had crashed his boat into the mountain because his eyes were attracted to the beauty that lay beyond the crest, he would follow her words and take it slow, never once falling like fair Lorelei.
A 1.5 revised and changed version of the story.
Version 2.0
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Originally Posted by Sherrinford
