Further Considerations

The feet aren't getting any warmer. Walking helps some, but one has to sleep as well. Both walking and lying with cold feet trying to sleep lead to the same thing, though. They lead to thinking.

Why not consider the possibility that Maki is dead? Well, because it is out of the question. She can feel it in her bones. After six years of day in day out you develop that sense. Even without the six years, since in a way the sense was there even before that. From the first time she encountered Maki sleeping on the streets, huddled in a torn blanket. Before the agreement, even before names. She supposes she wouldn't have walked up to Maki if not. She supposes Maki would not have let her.

Dead no, but very possibly lost forever. She has a sense about that too, but there are two competing senses, and whenever she listens to the one she thinks it's because she's fooling herself with it so as not to listen to the other. What is worse, hope or irrevocability? Surely what's done is done but in the momentary uncertainty, things could still go one way or another. And of course there's the one way she wants them to have gone, that's for sure. Things moving into action because of the cold feet, long-absent mind debris present once again and what-not aside, she certainly wishes Maki were not gone.