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The crystal shimmers like a pearl washed in moonlight. It gleams like Ondra’s tears — tears of a mother. Its light does not fade, not even as the shards are dragged down by the water.

All Almerth has left are metaphors, comparisons, and pitiful prayers no one will answer. Ondra may be his mother, but she does not plunge into the depths of an icebound lake to pull her son from cruel currents. Nor does she shed a single tear for him, or sing him a final lullaby to make the drowning gentler.

And still, Almerth finds himself thinking of how beautiful the crystal is. Its glow burns into his vision as water fills his lungs, as his body grows heavy, as the cold begins to feel like fire. In the end, it dims — as all light dims — only to give way to a new radiance, a violet gleam in someone else's eyes. 

Mothers can be cruel.