Hannibal and Will

The autumn forest greeted them with dampness and a ringing silence. Will walked slightly ahead, clutching the leash of his dog, whose ears twitched nervously at every rustle. Abigail, wrapped in a plaid scarf, kept glancing at her new sister.

Her name was Lyra. She had appeared in their strange family six months ago—a silent shadow with enormous eyes that seemed to see into the very essence of things. She barely spoke, but Will once told Hannibal, "She senses even what we try to hide from ourselves." Then Lecter merely smiled, adjusting his cuffs.

Now Lyra trailed behind everyone, her head down. She held an old tablet in her hands, and charcoal pencils jingled in her jacket pocket. She stopped by an old maple tree, its roots intricately intertwined with a granite boulder. The tree's bare branches stretched skyward like a tangle of blood vessels.

"It's beautiful here," she said unexpectedly. Her voice was quiet and hoarse.

Hannibal, who had been watching her with narrowed eyes, came closer. He stopped a few feet away, not invading her personal space. In his hand was a thermos of hot chocolate with chili peppers.

"You see beauty in decay, Lyra," he said, and it wasn't a question. "It's a rare gift."

She slowly looked up at him. Will noticed it from the side—something he'd only seen in the mirror flickered in her eyes. Not fear. Understanding. And acceptance. A dark empath—she didn't empathize, she absorbed other people's emotions, processing them into her own strange, dark palette.

Abigail came up and touched Lyra's sleeve.

“Show me what you’re drawing,” she asked almost in a whisper.

Lyra hesitated, but then turned the tablet over. The image on the paper wasn't of a tree. It was of Will, his back turned, but with a shadow stretching toward him from the forest itself—a shadow with antlers. And next to him, almost invisible, stood Hannibal, his shadow antlers, but different—a crown woven from branches and bones. Between them, floating in the air, was a small figure with unfinished wings—Lyra herself.