with flowers and my love both never to come back

Sabrina sits on the edge of her bed, just barely aware of the warm, furry lump of familiar pressing into her ankle. She tastes salt on her tongue, and though her heart roars with the wind coming through where Charlie's disappearance had gashed it open. Not the hurricane now, no hellfire crackling in her fingertips-- she's in a place that's still silent and suspended, feeling the sensation of tears rolling fatly down her cheers but little else.

She keeps from total freefall, from screaming and letting righteous anger and grief take her, by thinking about how she's waiting for Rosie. Rosie's on her way, and then Rosie will be with her, and they'll be together, pressed so that they can feel each other breathe. Too much thinking about anything else starts her down a line of images that she supposes might be seen as melodramatic, even if the appeal to her.

For so many reasons, she can't give in and let herself be consumed. Rosie would be burned too, and that it's Charlie, ridiculously kind Charlie, who they've lost, tightens cranks up her resolve.

Salem leaps from her feet and runs yowling to the sound of the door opening, and Sabrina thinks about how Rosie will be here soon, to hold and be held.