The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Finished 'All the Burning Stars'. Thoroughly exhausted. One more story to go. I will write it tomorrow, and then... well, then. I have a demi-bouteille of champagne, seriously.

To women in love, to poets, to partisans, to students, to brilliance, boldness, recklessness, hungers of all kinds, to the yearning to -- by words left behind -- never, never die; I'll drink to those things, to them,  I lay this at their feet.

            "Faster, coolie, please," Hirsh quoted, half in song.
            "I'd never tell them to go faster. My God."
             "I know, but you're well-bred." He dug in his pockets for some bread, found none, and stretched at his length looking mournful. "I'm sorry, I've nothing to offer you."
            "Nothing I'd take from you," she said, unthinking. When she did think, for a
moment, she put her hand out and met with his collar, and he was trembling.
             "Hirsh, no, I didn't mean that."
             "It was the truth." His voice came a little stiffly, as if it caught on something.
             "You're my friend, Hirshke. Always, my friend. And -- in another life, maybe, more than that. If I could be like that, Mazek, it would be with you. I've tried to be like that, and I can't."
             "I spoke to your father," Hirsh said, flat.
             "You spoke to -- you braved Father? Why? When?"
            "The usual reason." He coughed. "You were in Berlin."
            "Whatever he said to you, Hirsh, I'm sorry. He must have--"
             "He didn't turn me down, actually."
             "Then why didn't you --" Raissa's face had twisted, all brows and mouth.
             "Because I am your friend." He looked apologetic, for interrupting her. "Anyway it was years ago. It doesn't matter."
             Raissa stared at him for more than three minutes. He sat silent, folded, his countenance like a bruise. Her voice had a thick rusting sound when she spoke again. "What's the atlas for? It was heavy."
             "Herr Kruk can kill me, if he catches me, but I'm going to tear some pages out of it. I need a map."
             "A map where?" Raissa sat up, ignoring the pullings and creakings and pain, and laid a steadying hand on his arm. "Hirsh, there's nowhere to go but here."
            He shook his head. "Plenty of places. You just have to get there."
            "They'll shoot you. Or worse! I don't want to think about the worse." She covered her face with her hands. They were after all grubby, and suddenly cool with sweat.
            "You don't have to think about it, because I won't get caught." Hirsh took her hands down, pressed her damp fingers on his knees. "Listen, they're looking east, always east. The Russians see to that. All I have to do is get out of here and go somewhere else. North," he suggested.
            "Oh, God."
            "You could come with me..."
             "I can't ride, I can't swim, I can't run," she deterred him. "I'll be all right, here. You said it yourself: the Russians are barely over the border."
            "I don't want to leave," he said suddenly, the brightness faltering from him. "Rai, I can't. I had all these thoughts of, of finding the Partisans, fighting the Germans, just being out there, being free -- and I can't!"
            "You can," she snapped. "You'd better. If you know a way out of here, you take it! And you do have a way, or you wouldn't risk a library book."
            "But --"
            "I think you're mad as hatters, all right, and I think it's dangerous, but it never crossed my mind," she lied, "that you couldn't do it."
             "But I never thought of it," Hirsh persisted. "Me getting away from here, and you... not."
            "I'll be all right," she went on lying, boldly. "I'll be here when you get back."
            "How can you say something like that?"
            "What, do you want me not to?" Raissa leaned in and kissed, very precisely,the corner of his mouth. He had never been closer to her in his life, and he couldn't move. Not until she pulled away.
            "Raissa..."
             "Go, then," she looked straight into his eyes unflinching, as if that would vanish him from the Ghetto inside a second. "But promise to come back."

Tonight, Kraada's fault, I was thinking of Dedric. Damn, she should be here for this. Sentimental artist amadaun, am I!