The strange thing about grief was how it accumulated inside, even while the physical world stayed the same.

He still wandered, still took care of his cats, still blessed those who asked for blessing. His room was the same. His food tasted the same.

Everything was as it was, but the old woman was gone.

Someone else fed his cats scraps. Rágn's mother woke him in the morning. The old woman did not scold him for eschewing shoes when he went out. And with her gone, it felt, dizzyingly, like she had never been there in the first place.

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