The butterfly came when she no longer searched for a sign.
It hovered above her hand. Fragile, luminous, weightless.
It landed like a thought that had waited years to arrive.
Far away, beneath a twilight sky glazed in indigo and frost,
he stood with his sword grounded in the earth.
He no longer gripped it as a weapon,
but as a memory. Sharp, necessary, and finally at peace.
They each stood at the edge of something vast.
A moment of deep knowing.
Only the quiet rhythm of breath meeting silence,
and the slow unfolding of a path
that would reveal itself
when they were ready to walk it.