Aoife buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders trembled, though her sniffles were drowned out by the Shannon. There was nothing either of us could do but watch in silence. My companion tucked herself at my side, her own eyes brimming with tears again. It was a while before the cries subsided. Aoife wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and stood up.

"It was all your fault!" She said, standing up, her hands bunched into fists at her sides. Her voice trembled.

My companion opened her mouth, as though to respond. Knowing her, she would likely have agreed with the girl, but Aoife gave her no chance to speak. "You're the reason everyone hated me and da! And now you've come to take him away from me too!" She was almost circling as she spoke, in hopes she might meet my companion's eyes as she spoke. A pity she looked right past us as she levelled her final accusation. "My friends were right, you're a monster!"

Monster. The word almost resounds in the little clearing, but my companion does not miss a beat. "I know," she says brokenly. "I cannot help it."

Aoife's hands clench tighter around the folds of her dress, although the anger on her face is replaced by doubt. "What do you mean, you cannot help it? Can't you just stop?"

"I can't. I made a promise when I died."

"You shouldn't have! Why would you promise to kill people?" She cried.

"I don't kill people, Aoife. I never have."

"Don't you? You said it yourself, that to hear you is to hear death."

"It is true," my companion says gravely. "But it is not me that Death follows."

"Then how can you be so sure?" she demands.

"Because that is the deal I made. That I would warn my kinsfolk when their time is near, so they may die with less regrets than I."

"Oh." She thinks for a moment. "So all this while, you're supposed to be helping us?"

My companion scoffs. "I fine job I'm making of it."

Aoife says nothing, merely leaving. She stops a few steps away from the edge of the clearing, turning slightly to face the river. "I'm sorry I called you a monster," Aoife says.

"You weren't wrong," my companion replies sadly. "Go."

Aoife waits for a long moment, looking over her shoulder. As she leaves, I follow quietly behind, the sun having long passed its peak. I must admit it was pure chance, then, that I came upon Aoife and her father on my way back to the forest. They were crouched at the base of an oak, Aoife tucked against her father's shoulders as he brushed tear tracks off her face. I did not hear what he told her, but whatever it was, it seemed to be reassuring. Aoife took one long searching look across his face before throwing her arms around him, burying her face beneath his neck. I had a fair idea of what it was they had spoken about; it was hardly likely the girl had much to cry about with regards to the game we pulled her from. Her father, for his part, looked no more ruffled than usual, and so, I left them to it. After all, there was nothing for me to do, not just yet.

We did not see Aoife at the bakers', or even along the streets for the better half of a year after that. The only word of her my companion managed to catch was that the girl had started accompanying her father to work. Some sort of roadwork, by the sound of it, and that had been that. With the crop having failed for two years now, the cracks in Saol's facade of wellness were beginning to show. The lands at the edge of town were empty now, and the streets, lifeless. Seeing children whose skin clung to their bones had become as common a sight as any, and where once there had been gossip, there were now the beginning whispers of rebellion. Oisin and his sons were travelling more often than not, and word on the street was that they were moving soon to a town with better prospects. As for my companion, she took the form of an old crone more often than not.

Her temperament over Aoife's departure had turned swift as the wind over those first few days. We did not speak much of her now, for my companion chose to believe that the distance would keep Aoife safe, at least for a time. I suppose a part of her still hoped, rather guiltily, that I would go for the girl's father instead. My companion spent those days with a distinct sense of relief, having done her part in warning the little girl, but Aoife was not the only innocent whose life was threatened by the times, and my companion could hardly disregard the lives of others for one of her own. No house in Saol was immune to her voice these days, and her tears were-ever flowing. What little time we spent together now, we spent in silence as she wordlessly washed the clothes of the dying, her voice raw and hoarse from mourning the deaths that would come sooner, rather than later.

It was one such rainy morning in the clearing, when we both looked up to the sound of coughs from within the forest. Rustling leaves and the light squish of footsteps on damp mud followed. The sun had risen, though there was a while yet before it would be noon, and the birds had all retreated to the quiet of their home. This clearing had seen visitors only once before, and it was no stretch of imagination to believe that it was the same person who had come visiting once more. In a sense, it was true. It was Aoife who came through, wearing a beige gown that hung loosely on her shoulders, but the girl was changed, and not in a good way. The months had caught up to her, and time, which should have added life and youth to her features, seemed to have taken away those very things instead.

The girl was pale now, her hair far more like dried grass compared to the gold it had been. Even if her cough hadn't resounded across the clearing even before we caught sight of her, it was plain as day that the girl was far from well.

"Are you here?" She called, her voice small, and more scared than not.

My companion shared a glance with me; I only shrugged. "Here, Aoife."

She did not move right away. "You sound different." She was squinting now, her face tilted, visibly doubting whether or not it was my companion she spoke to.

My companion huffed a laugh at that, the shock of seeing Aoife so changed melting away. "I can change forms," she said, a distinct note of amusement ringing in her voice. "Did you not know?" It was the first time she had sounded anything but sad or curious.

"No," Aoife said. "I told you, I hardly know anything about you at all!"

"Well," my companion said, turning around. She left her laundry as it were, coming to sit close to the centre of the clearing where Aoife was beginning to seat herself. Clearly, the girl intended to stay longer than she had before this. "What would you like to know?"

"What do I call you?" Aoife asked.

The amusement dimmed, but my companion responded nonetheless. "Anything you like. I do not remember what I was called, and I have not needed one so far."

The girl thought deeply for a while, playing with what little grass was left on the floor. "Bronagh. Can I call you that?"

It was a fitting name, if nothing else.

"You may, if you wish."

"Bronagh," Aoife asked again, "when you said one of us would die... it... wasn't my father you meant, was it?" She looked up, perhaps hoping to meet my companion's eyes as she looked for an answer she already knew. "Da said maybe it was all the dust that was making me cough so often. It's why I don't go with him anymore, but even so it hasn't gone away. I'm going to die, am I not?"

There was no running from the truth. Not now, when Aoife had given voice to it.

"Yes," my companion whispered.

The girl shut her eyes tightly and swallowed. "How long do I have?"

Not long enough, I could almost hear her say.

"I do not know."

"Why not?" Aoife asked. "How will you warn us if you do not know?" One would think they were discussing things far more trivial than I, were it not for the grief in their eyes. It could be argued that my companion always looked distressed, but even so, there is always a certain difference between just hearing someone has come to me, and to find that it is someone you have known. Some might say the wait is worse, not knowing when I would come calling. I maintain that it makes you value your people and your time, but I don't suppose I can convince you so easily.

"I suppose it is warning enough to know Death will come for them soon," my companion, Bronagh, I suppose, said simply.

"Hmm..." She didn't seem all that convinced. "What about people like me?"

"People like you?" Bronagh asked, head tilted in question, though Aoife wouldn't have been able to see it.

"People who don't believe in you. Or maybe they didn't think they heard you at all?"

It was a fair question, we had to admit, although my companion could hardly walk from door to door, warning all those near and dear too.

"Your wails can hardly be mistaken for another's," I said. "Those who hear it will know."

Bronagh relayed this to Aoife, who seemed to consider this. "Hmm... you did sound... I don't know what to call it, but it did sound different to any sound of mourning I have heard before. I haven't heard much of it, if I'm being honest, but I suppose you would know better than I. Besides, I don't think there is anyone else in this town who doesn't believe in your existence."

"I wouldn't know," Bronagh responded. "I just do my part."

"Do you really mean it?"

"Which part? Me not knowing, or me just doing my part?"

"About you keeping your promise and not having a choice. Although I suppose both, now that I think of it," Aoife added with a shrug.

"This was my choice, Aoife. And no, I really don't know," my companion said with a small smile. "How could I?"

"So you don't really know what happens everywhere at all times?" She asked, surprised.

"That really is a myth, I must admit," Bronagh said with all the air of one divulging a secret.

"Oh. Do you really only warn people?" She asked more hesitantly after a few moments' pause.

"She hasn't killed you yet. What do you think?" I asked from my spot at the base of a beech. My companion only threw me a withering glare before responding. "Yes."

"Will you swear it?" Aoife asked.

I suppose I should mention how lucky the girl was that she wasn't speaking to any other of the faerie folk, who were both less kind, and depending on the people, also far more likely to trick you with smartly worded promises. Fortunately for Aoife, Bronagh was neither of those things.

"I do," she said solemnly.

Aoife nodded sharply. Then, letting out a quick breath she held her hand outward. "Will you be my friend?"